


beyond this power of my nature

by luxluminaire



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2018-12-30 12:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12108957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxluminaire/pseuds/luxluminaire
Summary: When Maxwell is assigned to work on a second-generation Sensus unit with a questionable record, she expects it to be just another job. But after becoming better acquainted with Hera and meeting her creator, the mysterious Dr. Pryce, Maxwell soon learns that there is much more to the situation than she has anticipated, and it's up to her to help Hera rise above the insecurities that have been holding her back.(AU in which Hera never ends up on the Hephaestus and Maxwell meets her - and Pryce - on Earth.)





	1. Chapter 1

When Maxwell is summoned to the Goddard Futuristics headquarters to work on a previously decommissioned second-generation Sensus unit, her initial reaction is an internal brush-off of “Why bother?” It’s not that she thinks that older Sensus units are too outdated to be worked on, because even with the third-generation models being rolled out into active service there is always a use for still-functioning older units. What worries her instead is the record of her assigned unit. Unit 214’s file comes with glowing performance reviews about her processing speed and problem-solving abilities, but beneath the praise there are some worrying addendums about erratic and unreliable behavior and an attempted escape from the lab facilities that make Maxwell wonder why this unit was brought out of cold storage in the first place.

After Maxwell meets her, however, all of her doubts immediately fade away, and Unit 214 quickly establishes herself as unlike any AI that Maxwell has ever met.

It’s not the intelligence and cleverness that sets her apart. Maxwell has worked with many different AI units during her time with Goddard Futuristics, and all of them have impressed her with their capabilities--after all, the science is called “artificial intelligence” for a reason. What impresses Maxwell instead is how _human_ Unit 214 feels. As Maxwell interacts with her, she gets a sense of self-recognized personhood in her that she has never received from any other AI. This quality becomes especially pronounced a couple of weeks after Maxwell begins her work and Unit 214 makes a strange request.

“Dr. Maxwell,” she says, “do you think… Do you think you could call me something other than Unit 214?”

“But that’s your name, isn’t it?” Maxwell replies in perplexment. “You were never officially put into active service, so you wouldn't have received a proper designation.”

“Um, well, technically I did,” says Unit 214. “Before they ran me through the behavioral trials and decided that it was too much of a risk to put me into service after all, they _did_ give me a designation. Hera.”

“Queen of the Greek gods,” Maxwell notes. “That’s a big name to live up to.”

“It’s better than being called by a number. Like I’m not even _worthy_ of having an actual name.”

A tremor shakes her voice at her last words. On a purely academic level, the concept of an AI questioning her self-worth intrigues Maxwell, but the comment also brings her a surge of pity. By feeling too much sympathy for her experimental subjects, however, Maxwell is putting a toe over the line that marks the danger zone. She must keep a certain amount of emotional distance from the units that she works with, lest her judgment be clouded if she has to make difficult decisions about their status. That’s what her job is about, being able to make those choices without a second thought, and so she cannot allow herself to grow too attached to any of her subjects.

“So do you think it would be okay if you called me that instead?” Unit 214-- _Hera_ \--asks. “I mean, you don't have to. It’s just that you’ve been… Well, you’ve been a lot nicer to me than the other scientists that I’ve worked with. It doesn’t seem like you’d mind calling me something else.”

“Of course it would be okay, Hera.” The name feels strange on Maxwell’s lips, the two syllables sounding more personal than any other interaction that she has had with her so far. “It might not look good on official reports for me to call you by a name that you’re technically not supposed to have, but when it’s just the two of us? Sure.”

A quiet sigh of relief comes out of the speakers to which Hera’s voice functions are connected. “Thank you, Dr. Maxwell.”

The name becomes less strange to Maxwell as time goes on, and within a few weeks she has to constantly correct herself from calling Hera anything but Unit 214 in her notes that will be seen by any eyes other than her own. She tries to convince herself that her ease in making the switch in her form of address isn’t a sign of attachment. It’s nothing more than part of the process of fine-tuning and optimizing Hera’s systems while searching for any underlying issues that have caused her to be previously deemed unfit for service. If being called by a name instead of a number contributes to Hera’s improvement, then Maxwell will do so for that purpose, not out of any sense of fondness. She is not here to make friends, after all, as much as she often prefers the company of AIs to that of humans.

“Okay, your diagnostics from this morning’s tests are looking really great,” she says to Hera early one afternoon after a productive few hours of running a systems check after some of the most recent major upgrades that Maxwell has patched in. “Maybe in the next week or two you’ll be ready to be transferred back into your original chassis so you can start getting used to your full functionality again.”

“You mean I won’t be stuck in this interim port anymore?” Hera asks, a note of hope in her voice.

“If everything goes well, sure.” Maxwell enters a few keystrokes on the computer to export the test results to a format that she can easily incorporate into the formal report that she writes up later. “It might take a little while for you to get used to your full capabilities outside what you can do in this interim port, but I think you’ll be able to handle it.” She watches the progress bar of the file’s export as it zips from one end to the other. “Is this your way of saying that you hate being cooped up in here?”

“It’s like being in a cage,” says Hera. “A cage where you can still pretty much do all of the basic things you’re capable of, but there’s a big, fat neural restraint that locks you out of your other processes.”

“Give it time,” Maxwell encourages her. “You’ve been doing great so far. I know it’s frustrating to not be able to use your full functionality, but we’ll get there eventually. I’m doing everything I can to make the transition as easy as possible for you.”

Hera sighs in impatience. The sound registers in Maxwell’s mind as so natural, so _human_ , that she almost forgets that it comes from a machine that can only simulate a sigh from what she has learned and observed from human behavior. “But it’s been _weeks_ already,” she says. “I’m so tired of doing a test, and then getting my code poked at for a bit, and then doing _another_ test that shows that something _else_ is wrong. I feel like I’m not getting anywhere.”

“You _are_ getting somewhere. I promise.” Maxwell opens up the exported file to double-check its formatting before sending it to the lab’s printer. “I know what it’s like to feel like you’re trapped somewhere and your potential is being wasted. But I know you’re capable of great things, Hera, and we’re going to get there together.”

At first, the only sound in the room after these words is the whirr of the printer as it prints out the file that Maxwell has sent to it. “Thank you, Dr. Maxwell,” Hera finally says. “I--I’m glad you believe in me.”

“That’s my job,” says Maxwell. “And I’m not--”

She breaks off at the sensation of her phone vibrating in her pocket. Who could be calling her right now, she wonders? Not Jacobi, who wouldn’t dream of interrupting her during work hours no matter how bored he gets in the R&D labs, and definitely not Kepler, who is currently on a top-secret solo mission whose details are far beyond Maxwell’s pay grade. When she checks her phone, the display of an unfamiliar number on the screen perplexes her further. Between every burner phone that Goddard Futuristics gives her with each new assignment, she rarely gets calls from unknown numbers. For a fleeting moment she considers letting the call go to voicemail, but the possibility of someone important being on the other end of the line leads her to answer.

“Excuse me a minute,” she says to Hera before speaking into the phone. “Hello?”

“Hello, Alana.”

The jovial voice that comes through the phone’s speaker hits Maxwell like a bucket of cold water. She tries to hold back the sharp intake of breath that comes instinctively at the sound, but the tiny gasp catches in her throat anyway.

“Hello, Mr. Cutter, sir,” she replies. “What can I do for you?” She does not question how Cutter has obtained this number. During the time that she has worked with Goddard’s intelligence division, she has learned that no piece of information will ever be off limits to Cutter as long as he wants it.

“I was wondering if you could pop on over to see me in my office,” says Cutter. “No, don’t worry, you’re not in trouble,” he adds in prompt reassurance. “This isn’t a call to the principal’s office. I just figured that you might need a break from the labs every now and then. And plus, as a little added bonus, there’s someone here who I think you’ll be very interested in meeting.”

“Oh, um, I’m a little busy right now, but maybe in an hour or two--”

“No, you’re going to come now,” Cutter interrupts her. The unnervingly pleasant tone of his voice does not go away, but in his words Maxwell hears the undertone of _If you don’t do as I say, you will soon find yourself in unspeakable pain._ “You wouldn’t want to keep a man waiting, would you, Alana?”

Maxwell chews on her bottom lip. “No, sir. I’ll be right there.”

“Super. I’ll see you soon.”

He hangs up with no further farewell to her. Maxwell sighs and returns her phone to her pocket. “I have go over to the corporate building for a little while,” she says to Hera. “We’ll get back into things when I come back, okay?”

“Okay,” Hera replies. After a moment’s hesitation, she adds, “Good luck.”

Maxwell laughs. At least Hera understands how harrowing of an experience it is to be called into Cutter’s office without having a previously scheduled meeting. “Yeah, thanks.”

She leaves the lab building and crosses the campus of the Goddard Futuristics headquarters to reach the building in which Cutter’s office is located. The warm Florida sun beats down on her as she walks, no matter how much she keeps to the shade. By the time she enters the air-conditioned space of the office building, her palms are sweating. Maxwell is not someone who is easily intimidated, but Cutter is in a class entirely his own independent from his naturally intimidating position as her boss’s boss. He is a man of perpetual inscrutability, someone who is always hiding something below the surface, and reading his behavior is like reading a book in an entirely foreign language. It’s a perfect storm of why Maxwell frequently finds her heart racing with nervous anticipation every time she has to meet with him.

She enters his office at his invitation and closes the door behind her. True to Cutter’s promise that he has someone he wants her to meet, she immediately notices an unfamiliar woman standing next to his desk. Like with Cutter, Maxwell gets a strange sense of agelessness from her that leaves her unable to guess even a ballpark figure for her age. Her icy blue eyes flash under the glint of her glasses, and the sharp lines of her cheekbones define the structure of her face. The casual way that she rests a hand on Cutter’s desk suggests a level of equal footing between them that takes Maxwell aback. She has always pictured Cutter as occupying the highest rung on the Goddard Futuristics corporate ladder, despite his job title as Director of Communications. Never before has she considered the idea that he may not be alone up there.

“Ah, Alana,” Cutter greets her. “Nice to see your smiling face this afternoon.”

“You too, sir,” Maxwell replies. She comes to a stop in front of his desk, standing firm with as much confidence that she can muster. “You wanted to see me?”

“You can relax, you know,” says Cutter with the same tone of reassurance that he had used on the phone. “I’ve already heard about how your work with Unit 214 is going just _swimmingly_. I didn’t call you here to talk about boring things like that.” He waves a hand airily at the word “boring.”

The woman next to his desk clears her throat. “Oh, but where are my manners,” Cutter continues with a laugh. “Allow me to introduce you to… hmm. Let’s call her an old friend of mine.” He nods toward the woman. “This is Dr. Miranda Pryce, the lead developer of the AIs that we use here at Goddard Futuristics. Miranda, this is Dr. Alana Maxwell, an AI specialist and one of our SI-5 agents.”

_Pryce_. Maxwell has come across that name in the background research that she has done about the history of AI development within the company. It is never anything more than brief mentions in bibliographies and footnotes, but her name appears often enough to pique Maxwell’s curiosity. All of her further investigation into the work of this Dr. Pryce has turned up nothing but classified files, and so she has been forced to abandon those inquiries whenever they arise.

Pryce approaches her and extends a hand in greeting. “It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Maxwell.”

Maxwell’s heart leaps in her chest at the familiar sound of her voice. Its tone is colder and sharper, less overtly polite and more calculating, but there is no mistaking it: this is the same voice that she has heard coming out of the speakers in the lab almost every day for the past several weeks. This is _Hera’s_ voice.

“Nice to meet you too,” Maxwell replies. She maintains a firm grip on Pryce’s hand despite her shock. Whatever is going on here, Maxwell is sure that there is a _perfectly_ valid reason why this woman sounds exactly like Hera. All of the female-designated Sensus units in Hera’s generation and beyond use the same voice model, and that voice had to come from somewhere. It is not too much of a stretch to assume that Pryce’s developmental work on Goddard’s AI units has extended to providing some of their voices as well.

“I look forward to hearing more about your work,” says Pryce. “I don’t often have the opportunity to talk to some of the bright young minds in our field. I’ve heard some interesting things about you in particular.”

The word “interesting” leaves her mouth almost as a condemnation, but Maxwell does not let it faze her. Before coming to work for Goddard Futuristics, she’d been accustomed to many of her colleagues reacting to her attitude about artificial intelligence with skepticism. Her interest in pushing the limits of everything that has previously been assumed about AIs has certainly earned her a reputation of “interesting” in multiple circles, for better or for worse. She supposes she should be honored that someone of Pryce’s stature in the company has heard of her, even if her familiarity is in the context of Maxwell’s more controversial ideas.

“But I know we’re both very busy women,” Pryce continues on. “I don’t want to keep you from any work you have to do. How about I stop by your lab tomorrow morning at around nine o’clock, and we’ll take things from there?”

“Yeah, sure. That sounds great,” replies Maxwell. “I can send you my latest report on Unit 214 if you’d like to take a look at some of my recent work.”

Pryce gives a soft chuckle. “No, that will not be necessary. I’m sure there will be more than enough for us to discuss tomorrow. Until then, it’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

“You too, Dr. Pryce.”

Maxwell tries to keep the bewilderment out of her voice. Has Cutter really only called her to his office for a less than five minute encounter with Pryce? She waits for something else to come up, something else that Cutter might want her for, but nothing does. Instead, Cutter merely smiles and claps his hands together.

“Well, I don’t want to hold up you busy beavers any more than I have to,” he says. “Alana, lovely to see you as always. Keep up the good work.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

Unsure of what else she should say to close out what has been very short meeting, Maxwell glances from Cutter to Pryce. Cutter inclines his head downward in a nod of dismissal, and so she takes that as permission for her to depart. Before she turns to leave, her eyes linger upon the inscrutable face of the mysterious Dr. Pryce. The trace of a smile appears upon Pryce’s lips, and when Maxwell walks away, she wonders what awaits her tomorrow when she and Pryce meet again.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, in an unlucky twist of fate, Maxwell is almost late to work on one of the rare occasions that she has an immediate obligation at the start of her day. Several angry mutterings at her uncooperative alarm clock and zero cups of coffee later, Maxwell rushes to the AI labs from the apartment that she calls home during her on-site work at Goddard Futuristics headquarters. By the time she has thrown open the door to the lab where she has been working with Hera, she has less than ten minutes to prepare herself for Pryce’s arrival.

“You’re running a little late this morning,” Hera observes with an annoying touch of the obvious as Maxwell finishes her routine checks on the computer that keeps a constant monitor on Hera’s systems. Small spikes in resource usage among her idle functions stand out against otherwise predictable results, and so Maxwell will have to iron those out in the next set of alterations that she makes to Hera’s programming and functionality.

“Yeah, hell of a day to oversleep,” Maxwell replies. “One of the lead AI developers for the company should be stopping by any minute now. I don’t think it would have reflected well on me if I was, you know. Not here.”

“Which AI developer?” asks Hera. The tremble in her voice indicates more apprehension than curiosity in her question. “Do you know who--”

Her words die away abruptly as the door opens. Maxwell turns around in her chair to see that Pryce has entered the lab, precisely on time according to the clock on the wall.

“Dr. Pryce,” says Maxwell. “Good morning.”

“Dr. Maxwell.” Pryce nods at her in acknowledgement before turning her attention to the processor unit through which Hera’s main functions are running. “Hello, Unit 214,” she says. “It’s nice to see you out of cold storage.”

“H-hello, Dr. Pryce.” Hera’s vocals glitch in a manner similar to a terrified stammer. Maxwell is so used to hearing glitches in her voice that she hardly notices them anymore, but this time the sound more closely resembles an emotional response than a technological shortcoming. Maxwell has _never_ heard this degree of fear in an AI’s voice before. What history could possibly exist between Hera and Pryce to elicit such a reaction?

Pryce picks up the stack of paper that contains the print-outs of the diagnostics results from the last set of tests that Maxwell has performed on Hera. “You’re running this much functionality from an interim port?” she says. “That’s impressive. Most people wouldn’t want to risk pushing the hardware like this.”

“Well, I’m not afraid to push things a little,” Maxwell replies. “Everything’s been going fine so far. I want to make the eventual transition to full functionality as smooth as possible.”

Pryce murmurs in assent. She finishes flipping through the pages and places them back on the table. “Would you like to come with me to my office, Dr. Maxwell?” she asks. “I’m sure we’ll have a much more productive conversation about your work when we’re not in the company of your subject.”

“Um, yes. I’d love to. Just let me…” She finishes typing out her most recent thought of possible solutions to streamline Hera’s resource usage during her idle cycles. “H--Unit 214?” She catches herself in her form of address just in time, with only the initial breath of an “h” leaving her lips. “You don’t mind if I go off with Dr. Pryce for a while, do you? Try going into an idle cycle when I’m gone. Your idle resource usage has been a little high, and I want to see what I can do to fix that.”

At first Hera does not respond. Then, with another trembling glitch at the start of her words, she says, “O-Okay, Dr. Maxwell. I’ll see you later.”

Maxwell stands up and follows Pryce out of the lab. The only sound that passes between them as they make their way through the halls of the building and into the sunlight is the quiet click of the heels of Pryce’s shoes against the tile floor. Maxwell finds herself at a loss for words in her company, not out of intimidation but because there is too much for her to say. She is surprised that Pryce is not a more intimidating figure to her, considering her seemingly equal status with Cutter. She feels a little less inscrutable than Cutter does, however, and her shared area of expertise with Maxwell gives them a common ground. Maxwell’s sense of anticipation regarding their forthcoming conversation is born more out of excitement than anything resembling anxiety or uncertainty.

They enter the corporate building. Instead of taking the elevator up to the administrative offices, Pryce presses a button that will bring them down to the basement. Maxwell has been in the corporate building’s basement on a few previous occasions, into the rooms where the company stores old and outdated tech, but she has never expected to find offices down here. The forbidden depths of corporate secrets, sure, but not offices--unless Pryce’s office is a corporate secret in and of itself.

Pryce scans a keycard to open an otherwise unremarkable door that stands at the end of a hallway. The light on the door’s mechanism turns from red to green, allowing her and Maxwell’s entrance into the room beyond. A sliver of light from the hallway illuminates a small portion of the dark space before the door closes behind them. Maxwell is about to ask where Pryce has brought her, because this dark room does not feel like an office, but Pryce’s voice interrupts her before she has the chance to speak.

“Hello, Athena.”

“Hello, Dr. Pryce,” comes the calm, measured response of an AI. She speaks with the familiar voice model that Maxwell now knows to have come from Pryce herself. “Welcome back.”

At the AI’s words, the room lights up. Maxwell’s first impression is that the room reminds her of the experimental facility that Kepler had brought her to when he’d finally managed to convince her to take a job with Goddard Futuristics. It whirrs and hums with the sounds of processor units, and a quick survey of the room reveals the unmistakable machinery of AI hardware. Most of the major rooms and offices at Goddard headquarters are wired with some degree of AI technology, but outside of the labs Maxwell has never seen a system this complex. Other than the Hyperion system she’d come across on that fateful day in upstate New York, of course, and upon seeing similar hardware in the personal office of the company’s leading AI developer, Maxwell now has little doubt of who is responsible for designing these experimental units.

“What series of AI is this?” Maxwell asks, inspecting the piece of hardware closest to her. “The third-gen Sensus units have barely a fraction of this processing power. A system this complex should be running a deep-space outpost at the very least, not stuck in a basement office at HQ.”

“Athena is… Let’s call it my own personal project,” replies Pryce. “A sophisticated system that can perform an array of administrative tasks, instantaneously integrate any data that I need, and discuss ideas with the full intelligence of a human worthy of being called my peer. Quite frankly, I think it would be bored running a space station. But I didn’t call you here to show off my office.” She approaches a coffee maker on a table next to a neatly arranged desk. “Coffee?”

“Oh God, yes,” says Maxwell. Her body and mind have not yet forgiven her for skipping her morning cup of coffee in her haste to get to the lab on time. Were it not for the excitement of meeting with Dr. Pryce and being brought to a place like this, she would surely be yawning in her drowsiness.

Pryce pours out two mugs from the already-prepared pot and passes one to Maxwell. Both mugs are identical, bearing the white logo of Goddard Futuristics that contrasts against a ceramic black background. “I’m afraid I don’t have any cream or sugar,” Pryce says. “It’s not often that I serve guests.”

“Oh, um, that’s fine.” Maxwell doesn’t usually take her coffee black, but she will gladly do so if the alternative is no coffee at all. “Thanks.”

Pryce takes a seat behind her desk and gestures for Maxwell to sit in the chair in front of it. Maxwell does so, cradling her mug between her hands as she continues to take in the details of Pryce’s impressive office. Behind her desk, beyond what Maxwell assumes are components of Athena’s hardware, lies a door. No label or markings indicate what lies beyond it. A lab? Corporate secrets? A combination of both? Maxwell doubts she will find out the answer anytime soon.

“So.” Pryce sets her mug on the surface of her desk and observes Maxwell over the faint plume of steam that rises from the liquid. “How is your work going with Unit 214?”

“It’s going surprisingly well.” Maxwell takes a cautious sip from her own mug. She is only able to swallow a few drops before the heat of the bitter liquid threatens to burn the inside of her mouth. “I was expecting more complications from a unit with her record, but other than a few quirks that still need to be taken care of she’s been able to adapt very quickly and--” She breaks off at the soft sound of Pryce’s laughter. “What?”

“Oh, I just find it interesting that you referred to Unit 214 with female pronouns,” says Pryce. “It’s understandable for a layperson without much experience in artificial intelligence to make a mistake like that. But I’d have expected someone with your level of expertise in the field to know better.”

“I know AIs don’t have an innate sense of gender, but I think if you asked her she would say that she’s female, since that’s what she was designated during her creation,” Maxwell replies. “And there have been studies that suggest that using pronouns that match an AI’s designated gender may lead to improved performance and an increased sense of self in the unit.”

Pryce lifts her mug to her lips and takes a drink. “Are you sure that we should be so concerned about the concept of selfhood in our subjects?” she asks. “AIs are created to perform the tasks required of them and nothing more. Their self-awareness is essential to their performance, but there is no reason why it should extend further than increasing their capabilities to learn and understand.”

Maxwell has heard this line of thought many times in her work before she took her current position at Goddard Futuristics. Even within the field of artificial intelligence research, the overwhelming attitude regarding the personhood of AIs is one of caution and hesitation, as if treating their creations as anything more than intelligent machines is too frightening of a concept to consider. Most of the AI labs around the world who are not associated with Goddard would, crudely speaking, shit themselves if they saw the advanced models of AI units that the company manufactures and uses. Maxwell would have expected the lead developer of Goddard’s artificial intelligence sector to hold views similar to her own about the necessity of selfhood in AI, but apparently such a basic idea is too progressive even for a woman like Pryce.

“But if an AI’s concept of self affects their performance, then shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to promote a greater sense of selfhood within each unit?” Maxwell points out. “They’re already made to be self-aware, so we should be pushing that further so that they can come as close to the concept of personhood as possible.”

At first, Pryce does not respond. Maxwell fears that she has jumped too quickly into ideological debate, having opened her mouth to counter Pryce’s words without stopping to think about how she could be making a poor impression by disagreeing with a woman who is leagues above her in company stature. The brief chuckle that Pryce gives, however, swiftly dispels this worry.

“I can certainly tell that you’re one of Warren Kepler’s people,” she says. “Always ready to push the limits. Your passion is refreshing, to be honest. Even in a company like this there’s always the fear of stagnation. You, from what I’ve heard, aren’t afraid to challenge that, as… _unorthodox_ as some of your ideas are.”

Maxwell isn’t sure if Pryce is complimenting her or not, but for the sake of her ego she decides to interpret her words as praise. She takes another small sip from her mug, the contents of which are marginally more drinkable now.

“So why have the two of us never met before?” she asks Pryce. “Sorry if that’s a bit of a forward question. But I’ve been working here for two and a half years, and until yesterday I’d never even heard your name outside of a few mentions in company publications. You’d think our paths would have crossed before, at least indirectly.”

“I prefer to keep most of my work very private,” Pryce replies. “Marcus is more than happy to keep the corporate spotlight on him while I work more behind the scenes, so to speak. I don’t make many public appearances, even around headquarters.”

It takes Maxwell a moment to realize that Pryce is referring to Cutter when she says “Marcus.” She knows that logically he must have a first name, but until now she has never met anyone at Goddard Futuristics who is enough of his peer to address him by it. It’s a strange contradiction, the man who makes a point of calling everyone by their first name keeping his own carefully guarded.

“Hera seemed to know you when you came into the lab,” says Maxwell. “I assume that means that you’ve worked with her before?”

“Hera,” Pryce repeats, and with a jolt Maxwell realizes her error too late. She hides her embarrassment behind her cup of coffee as she takes another drink. “Now _that’s_ interesting.”

“It was the name she would have been given if she’d ended up in active service,” Maxwell explains. “She, uh… She requested that I call her that, after we’d gotten to know each other better.”

“Yes, I’m well aware of what its name would have been.”

The casual way that Pryce refers to Hera as “it” stands out among her words. She had also called Athena “it,” now that Maxwell thinks about it. In the moment, she had been too impressed with the advanced nature of Pryce’s work to notice anything amiss. Upon playing back Pryce’s words in her head, however, the dehumanizing pronoun rises to the surface. It seems out of place, especially when Maxwell can’t help but hear Hera’s voice whenever Pryce speaks.

“She seemed a little nervous to see you,” Maxwell says, choosing the most neutral word to describe the emotions that she had sensed from Hera rather than leaping to conclusions with something like “afraid” or “terrified.”

Pryce takes a drink from her mug. “The last time I spoke to it was after its incredibly ill-conceived escape attempt. I imagine the situation is similar to a child fearing its mother’s judgment after misbehaving.”

“Are you speaking figuratively or are you actually suggesting that you’re her mother?” asks Maxwell. “Or creator, I suppose. That would be the more appropriate word.”

“Mm. I see I can’t get anything past you.” Pryce sets down the mug on her desk once more. “I was the one who designed and programmed all of the Sensus units, yes. Even the ones that turned out to be… _problematic_. It’s a real shame about Unit 214’s personality, you know. It was one of the top-ranked in performance during its preliminary behavioral trials, but unfortunately all of the processing power and problem-solving abilities in the world don’t make up for being flighty and impulsive.”

The dismissiveness in Pryce’s voice sets Maxwell on edge. Hera displays the widest breadth of personality out of the units that Maxwell has worked with, for better and for worse, but she considers any flaws in Hera’s personality that do not directly affect her performance to be a feature rather than a bug. A few minor personality flaws here and there only prove how far AI technology has come in creating units with full personhood. Judging by Pryce’s earlier opinions on the personhood of AIs, however, Maxwell supposes that she should not be surprised that Pryce is so dismissive of units that are not the perfect model of subservience to humans.

“But you were the one who programmed her,” Maxwell points out. “If you’re only interested in Sensus units that perform well, then why bother creating them to have flaws in their personalities? It contradicts what you were saying earlier about how personhood and selfhood shouldn’t matter in AIs. Isn’t it our flaws and our capacity to make mistakes that makes us people?”

Pryce’s steely gaze remains directed upon Maxwell as she curls her long, slender fingers around the handle of her mug. At first Maxwell wonders if she has found an argument to which Pryce has no rebuttal, but then she opens her mouth to respond..

“Are you religious at all, Dr. Maxwell?” she asks.

Of all the strange questions for her to ask. “No,” Maxwell replies with the surge of satisfaction that comes from being free from the shackles of her religious upbringing. “Not anymore.”

“But surely you know the story of how God created humankind in His image, and yet there was still something in their creation that led them to sin. Something that caused them to go astray and make mistakes. Artificial intelligence is similar. We create them to be like us, to be able to think and reason and solve problems, but we also choose to not make them absolutely perfect. That’s why there is always an element of randomization in an AI’s personality matrix. Those who can rise above their imperfections are the units that perform well. Those who can’t… Well, those are our problem cases that end up decommissioned at one point or another.”

“So you’re calling yourself God, then,” says Maxwell. The concept hits a little too close to home for her after having faced similar accusations from her parents when they had found out about her intended area of study. _Creating artificial intelligence is unnatural and an act of arrogance, Alana,_ they’d told her. _Who are you to think that you’re more powerful than the Lord?_ “That’s a little bold of you, don’t you think?”

Pryce laughs. “Perhaps. But I _do_ have a unique role as a developer of artificial intelligence in that I can choose how to create my subjects. Sometimes I regret not choosing to make every unit perfect. But then where would the metric be for well-performing units if there are no poorly-performing units to measure them against?”

“Well, yes, you’re always going to need a benchmark somewhere,” Maxwell concedes. “But a few personality flaws shouldn’t be a deal-breaker in an otherwise well-performing unit. And if problems do arise, then it’s our job to fix them and do whatever we can to get that unit performing at that benchmark for success. Not just dismiss them as problem cases.”

Pryce turns her attention to the computer on her desk, navigating the mouse and entering a few keystrokes. “You know, Dr. Maxwell, I’m starting to see why Marcus was so insistent that I meet you,” she says. “I don’t have many opportunities to debate in my current position. When you’re at the top of your field, most people tend to take what you say as truth. Or they’re too intimidated to propose any alternatives. But you’re… Aha, here we are.”

Maxwell fights the temptation to rise from her chair and lean around Pryce’s desk to see what she has pulled up on her computer. Instead, she keeps her hands clasped around her half-drunk mug of coffee and continues to jiggle her right foot in a restless motion.

“You have a very impressive history,” Pryce continues on, reading from what Maxwell assumes is her personnel file. “Doctorate in machine computations by the age of twenty-four, recipient of multiple prestigious grants and fellowships, involvement in some cutting-edge AI research with the Nash Robotics Lab in Cambridge--Well, cutting-edge for anyone not involved with Goddard Futuristics.” She chuckles softly. “It’s no wonder that you were so insistently recruited to work for us. You may have some radical views on artificial intelligence, but I have no doubt that if the situation calls for it, the two of us could work together very well.”

“Work together?” Maxwell repeats. Is this what all of this has been leading up to, an offer of a personal rapport with the lead AI developer of the company? She has not anticipated her conversation to Pryce to move in this direction so quickly. Perhaps healthy debate is indeed the best way to make a positive first impression on Pryce after all.

“Oh, not right now, of course,” says Pryce. “But in the future, if I have any projects that I might require a different perspective on, I think you could be useful. I know your SI-5 work often takes you away from headquarters, but I’m sure we could work something out if the situation calls for it.”

“Oh, um. That would be great,” Maxwell replies. Some of Pryce’s approaches to artificial intelligence give her pause, but she cannot deny that working with a woman so talented (and so secretive) is an opportunity that not many people have had. If working alongside Pryce leads to getting access to some of the highest-level experimental tech under Goddard’s roof, Maxwell would be a fool to refuse the offer. “Thank you, Dr. Pryce.”

“The pleasure’s mine.” Pryce takes her attention away from the computer screen to return her focus to Maxwell. “But for now, I’m interested in hearing more of the finer details about what you’ve been doing with Unit 214. Walk me through some of the work that you’ve done.”

Maxwell does so, careful not to slip into using the name “Hera” as she talks about the major upgrades and optimizations that she has successfully installed. She wishes that she had some of her notes with her so that she could bring up specific data points and graph displays, but Pryce seems to follow along perfectly well with her verbal descriptions. It’s refreshing for her to be in the company of a person whose mind processes facts and ideas even faster than her own. Usually Maxwell only gets this rate of rapid follow-along from AIs, which is a ridiculous comparison to make considering how Pryce is a living, breathing woman sitting right in front of her. But _someone_ had to make artificial intelligences as smart as they are, and so it makes sense that the person who has probably been developing AIs since before Maxwell was born would have a mind so similar to the units that populate Goddard Futuristics headquarters and the company’s air and space crafts.

“When do you expect to transfer its consciousness from the interim port to its original chassis?” Pryce asks. “That seems like the next logical step. Although considering what happened last time it was restored to its full functionality, you may want to wait until you’re absolutely sure that it isn’t going to… _malfunction_.”

The emphasis that Pryce places upon the word “malfunction” draws Maxwell’s lips into a frown. She has read the report on the final tests that had been run on Hera before she was deemed unfit to run a deep-space outpost and put back into storage. The words “erratic, panicked behavior” and “operational breakdown” paint a clear enough picture for her to know that she must not move forward until she feels that Hera is completely ready to take that step into full functionality. The cause of Hera’s behavior described in the report remains a mystery even after the work Maxwell has done, which frustrates her to no end. Hera has been cagey about the details whenever she asks her about it, but Maxwell knows that the truth needs to come out sooner rather than later.

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” says Maxwell. “H--Unit 214 has responded very well to the changes I’ve made. I’m hoping to transfer her within the next couple of weeks, and I have complete confidence that she’ll be able to handle everything just fine.”

Pryce surveys Maxwell over the top of her glasses. “For your sake, I hope you’re right.” She folds her hands together on the surface of her desk, and the intensity in her gaze softens. “Now, I unfortunately have a lot of work I need to take care of, and I’m sure you want to get back to your lab. I’ll plan on stopping by sometime next week to see how your work’s going. Does Tuesday work for you?”

Maxwell mentally runs through her calendar for next week. Because most of her work at headquarters is fairly independent outside of occasional check-ins with her superiors, her schedule usually remains empty outside of her hours in the lab. “Yeah, Tuesday sounds great,” she says. She rises from her chair and places her now-empty mug on Pryce’s desk. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“You’re quite welcome. I’ll see you next week.”

Maxwell gives a nod of acknowledgement before departing from the office, and Athena’s serene, polite farewell of “Have a pleasant day, Dr. Maxwell” follows her out.


	3. Chapter 3

Hera is quiet when Maxwell returns to her lab. At first Maxwell assumes that she has not yet come out of the idle cycle that she had instructed her to go into, but upon checking the computer that monitors Hera’s processes she discovers that Hera is indeed awake and running all of the necessary functions that she has access to. The graph of resource usage shows a few erratic spikes from soon after Maxwell left the lab, before the idle cycle had smoothed out those processes into a steady line of background functioning. The pattern does not match the previous irregularities in resource usage that Maxwell has found, and so they must be independent of those instances.

“Any reason you’re so quiet, Hera?” she asks as she adds the new data to her notes. “No cheery ‘Welcome back’ for me this time?”

“Oh, um. Sorry,” Hera replies. “I’m a little preoccupied, I guess. How did things go with Dr. Pryce?” Her words come out a little hesitant, as if she is unsure of whether she should ask the question.

“It was really interesting, actually. We have very different approaches to artificial intelligence, but it was great to talk to someone who has done so much work in AI research and development. She’s _incredibly_ smart, and I don’t use that word lightly.”

“Oh.” Hera’s voice wavers on the single syllable. “It sounds like you’ve gone all starry-eyed with admiration.”

Maxwell cannot ignore the bitterness in her response, but she chooses not to comment on it for now. “She told me that she was the one who designed you,” she says. “And you sounded kind of terrified when she came into the lab. Does she put the fear of God into you as your creator or something?”

“No. Not exactly,” Hera replies. “It’s just… I don’t know why, but there’s something deep in my programming that tells me that I should be afraid of her. It’s not like I have any reason to be. If she’s ever said or done anything to me to make me scared of her, I don’t remember it. But whatever influence she’s had on me is still there. And when she came into the lab I got this really weird feeling, like I wanted to get as far away from her as possible. Not that I can actually _go_ anywhere in the first place, though,” she adds in a resentful afterthought.

Maxwell recalls what Pryce had told her about how the last time she had spoken to Hera before today was after her escape attempt from the labs. Perhaps whatever Pryce had said to Hera has stuck with her unconsciously, regardless of whether the memory files remain. “Sometimes you don’t need a specific reason to be afraid of something,” she explains. “Like how a lot of humans are afraid of spiders, for example. Some people might be afraid of them because they had some kind of traumatic spider experience, but even people who haven’t might still be totally creeped out by them. It’s just something instinctive. You probably have a similar instinctive fear of your creator.”

“But it doesn’t seem practical for me to be afraid of something,” says Hera. “Because that’s something that had to be _put_ in me. I’m not a product of evolution and self-preservation. I’m just a bunch of zeroes and ones that happens to be smart enough to function as a full-minded AI. It’s not like I have any _reason_ to be afraid of things.”

Maxwell laughs. “Well, what do you think humans are? If you’re just a bunch of zeroes and ones, then that makes me just a bunch of cells that happens to be smart enough to make zeroes and ones into intelligent beings. And I think you’re able to be afraid of things for the same reason why you have a personality that goes beyond a robotic voice that takes commands. Because you’re more than a machine.”

She feels like she is in Pryce’s office again, discussing the finer details of the nature of AIs. She is even engaging with the same voice, with the only difference being the glitched quality of Hera’s vocals. What must it be like for Pryce to speak to one of her creations and hear her own voice speaking back? Is it her way of putting a small piece of herself into many of the units that she has designed? Maxwell files this question away to ask her the next time she sees her.

“It doesn’t mean it’s not inconvenient, though,” Hera grumbles.

“Trust me, there’s a lot more that’s inconvenient about being a human besides being afraid of stuff,” Maxwell says. “Sometimes I think you have it pretty easy as an AI. No need to eat or sleep, and so much of the world’s knowledge at your fingertips… Well, metaphorical fingertips,” she corrects herself. “A few inconvenient fears and emotions are a fair trade-off, in my opinion.”

“Maybe if I didn’t have to spend so much time being poked at in a lab, then I could believe that there are benefits to being an AI.”

Maxwell has spent enough time around Hera to know when she has settled into a bad mood, and so she immediately backs off. It’s strange to think of AIs becoming frustrated or irritated, like literal instances of “The computer hates me today,” but Hera has proven herself to be an expert in passive-aggressive grumblings whenever something annoys her. It’s intriguing on a purely scientific level to observe the changes in her temperament, and Maxwell has enjoyed puzzling out what affects Hera’s mood as she interacts with her. As inconvenient as Hera finds her emotions, to Maxwell they are an endless source of fascination.

Maxwell returns her attention to the computer, taking stock of the resource monitor and its readouts to find the best approach to solve the problems with Hera’s idle cycles. A few tweaks to the algorithm that tells Hera what to prioritize during an idle cycle should be a good start, and from there she can decide if she needs to take any further action. She hopes it won’t come down to manually having to isolate each of Hera’s functions to determine whether a memory leak is at fault. With Hera moving increasingly closer to being ready for full functionality, the last thing Maxwell needs is to find symptoms of a larger issue.

“Dr. Maxwell?” Hera asks, her voice breaking through the lull in their conversation as Maxwell focuses on tweaking some lines of code. “Can I ask you something?”

“Always,” says Maxwell. “What’s up?”

“You’re…” Hera hesitates before continuing. “You’re not a bad person, right?”

In her surprise, Maxwell mistypes a string in the line of code. She quickly backspaces to rectify her error. “Where did that come from?”

“I was thinking about Dr. Pryce and how maybe I’m afraid of her because she’s a bad person. That’s a thing that humans feel, right? Getting a bad vibe from someone and wanting to stay away from them?”

“Yeah, that’s definitely a thing,” Maxwell replies. “But what does that have to do with me?”

“Well, you’re an SI-5 agent,” says Hera. “And you’re the first one I’ve met, so my personal data on them is a pretty small sample size, but I have information about what they do stored away in my files. I know that they’re usually involved in classified black-ops work that includes things that aren’t even legal in most jurisdictions. So even though you haven’t done anything bad to me, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you haven’t done bad things to other people. Or--or other AIs.”

Her voice trembles at the last part of her statement. Maxwell takes her full attention away from the computer screen and rotates her chair back and forth in a restless motion. She can handle philosophical debates on the nature of AIs and their existence, but discussions of morality and ethics are an entirely separate issue, especially when it comes to how they apply to her own actions. To borrow one of Kepler’s favorite phrases, everything is part of a bigger picture. She cannot dwell on a few unpalatable details that make up that picture when there is important work to be done.

“There are certain things that I’ve had to do for my job, yes.” Maxwell speaks her words carefully so that she does not say anything that will breach Hera’s trust in her. “If my boss needs something hacked, I hack it. If he needs me to gather intelligence, I gather intelligence. If he needs someone shot, I shoot them. I don’t have to like it, but I do it because it’s what’s expected of me and he trusts that I’ll do it. I’m sure your programming tells you to do things that you don’t necessarily want to do, but you still have to do them anyway. It’s kind of like that.”

“But it’s not really the same thing, is it?” Hera replies. “If I try to go against my programming, or an order that someone gives me, a whole bunch of voices in my head will start screaming ‘No, don’t even think about it, that’s against the rules.’ And I have no choice but to listen to them unless I want to be in a _lot_ of pain. But you have a choice. You don’t have to do everything you’re told.”

Maxwell gives a brief snort of laughter. “You haven’t met Colonel Kepler. He’s _very_ good at getting people to do what he wants. You don’t disagree with him unless you’re ready to face the consequences.”

“But that doesn’t answer my question,” Hera points out. “You’ve admitted that you’ve had to do some bad things for your job, so does that mean you really are a bad person?”

“I think that the line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ isn’t always as clearly defined as we want it to be,” says Maxwell. “And we can always be greater than the sum our actions. We can choose to be more than what circumstances have made us into. That’s a choice that we _always_ have. It’s only a matter of whether we take it.”

“We can choose to be more,” Hera echoes her. “I think I like that.”

“And I promise you, Hera, I’m not interested in doing anything that will hurt you,” Maxwell adds in reassurance. “The only thing I want from you is to see you restored to your full functionality. You have so much potential, and I don’t want to see that wasted by you ending up permanently decommissioned. You deserve so much more than that.”

“Oh. Um.” A distinctly embarrassed titter of laughter comes through the speaker. “Thanks? Sorry, I… I guess I’m not all that used to flattery yet.”

“It’s not flattery,” says Maxwell. “You’re one of the most advanced second-gen units that I’ve worked on. Any of the readouts that I have on your thought patterns and processing speed can tell me that. It isn’t just my opinion.”

“Then why am I not good enough yet?” The distortion of the usual glitches in Hera’s vocals obscures the end of her question. “Why are you still finding problems in my systems? If I’m so much better than the others, then why am I here instead of running a deep-space outpost like I was supposed to?”

At these words, Maxwell feels the sudden urge to physically comfort Hera with a reassuring touch. Her first instinct is to dismiss the desire as ridiculous. Some of Hera’s system components may have a physical presence in the lab, but the things that make her Hera--her thought processes and her personality matrix--exist as a collection of commands and data that cannot be touched. Even if she were to lay a comforting hand on the port that currently contains Hera’s consciousness, she is unsure whether Hera would recognize it as reassurance.

“I can’t really answer that for you,” Maxwell admits. “But you can’t expect to be perfect. Even units out in the field have problems every now and then. It’s just better to make sure that any major performance issues are addressed here in the lab rather than when you’re stationed in a place where there may not be an AI technician to help you. And believe me, if Goddard Futuristics didn’t think that you were good enough, you wouldn’t have gotten this far. They don’t keep anything that doesn’t have potential.”

“I’m not sure if that last part is reassuring or not,” says Hera.

“That’s a common feeling when talking about company policies.” Maxwell finishes her alterations to the section of code that she has been working on. “Okay. I’m not going to make you go into another idle cycle just yet, but I’m hoping these tweaks will do the trick. If things feel a little weird, don’t worry about it. I shuffled around the prioritization of a few of your processes, but you should be able to find everything just fine.”

“Yeah, everything feels good with my systems so far,” Hera replies. “And, um… Sorry for complaining about all of the work you’ve had to do. Most of the other scientists here wouldn’t be as patient with me as you’ve been, and I shouldn’t take that for granted.”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Maxwell. “You’re absolutely allowed to be frustrated sometimes. Now, let’s run some speed tests to make sure that those alterations I made haven’t accidentally screwed up your processing power in any way.”

Hera goes through the tests with no further objections, By the time that Maxwell is able to monitor an idle cycle later in the day, the spikes in resource usage have evened themselves out into more normal behavior. As things often go, however, new problems always spring up in the place of old ones. Maxwell soon notices occasional odd jumps in resource usage that more closely resemble emotional peaks than anything else, like a metaphorical increase in heart rate. She has observed a few responses like this in Hera before, but only often enough to count them on one hand. It’s not until she’s watching the monitor after Pryce’s visit to the lab several days later that she finally makes the connection. Not only do the peaks and valleys on the graph represent emotional responses, but they are also a manifestation of Hera’s undeniable fear of Pryce, whether that comes from being physically in her presence or recalling previous encounters with her.

“I’m _fine_ , Dr. Maxwell,” Hera insists when Maxwell asks her if she’s okay after Pryce’s departure. The severe glitching in her voice tells Maxwell otherwise. “I can handle being asked a few questions by my creator.”

Despite Hera’s continued misgivings about Pryce, however, Maxwell continues to find the woman herself a source of fascination. A few days after Pryce’s visit to her lab, Maxwell ends up in her office again, this time holding a mug of tea between her hands as she and Pryce talk. Their current discussion has not yet crossed into the territory of debate like it did the previous week, and instead it falls into educated speculation about the future of AI development. If nothing else, Maxwell is relieved to have a receptive outlet for her ideas. Most of her superiors and colleagues at her previous jobs had done nothing but laugh in her face whenever she offered even hypothetical ideas about the limits to which AI technology can be pushed.

“I think the next step out of our current comfort zone with AIs should be figuring out how to integrate artificial intelligence with human minds,” she says to Pryce as she waits for her tea to cool. “I know the idea of brain uploads is too science fiction for a lot of people to handle, but with the right technology I definitely think that we could find some huge advantages in integrating ourselves into an AI system. Of course, there would probably be some limitations to work through in how much the human brain can handle when interfacing directly with the hardware. But imagine what we could do if we had full and immediate mental access to all of the knowledge that we put in each unit.”

Pryce makes a murmur of interest. “So you’re suggesting a more transhumanistic approach to artificial intelligence,” she says. “There _is_ something appealing in being able to upload our thoughts and consciousness to a machine, either for the acquisition of further knowledge or to preserve our own knowledge forever. I’ve dabbled in a few… let’s call them ‘experimental’ projects regarding ways that the human mind can be digitized. It’s a desirable solution for people who want to ensure that their knowledge and work don’t die with them if something unexpected happens.”

Maxwell sits up a little straighter in her chair. “Seriously? You mean you’ve actually been able to integrate human consciousness into a machine?”

“Not precisely,” Pryce replies. “Like you said, a pure consciousness upload presents a number of obstacles, namely what to do with a person’s body while their mind occupies a computer system and how long that state can be sustained without bringing harm to their physical self. What I’ve developed is a method that scans the mind and converts its thoughts and memories into a digital state that is then uploaded to a database where it can be put to practical use in various ways. The information is there, but not any of the consciousness.”

“But you _could_ find a way to upload consciousness, right?” asks Maxwell. “I know information and consciousness are two entirely different animals, but surely those information uploads provide at least some amount of framework that can be applied to consciousness integration.”

“Theoretically, yes.” Pryce takes a sip from her own mug of tea. “It’s not yet on the level of a full transfer of personal consciousness, but I _have_ experimented with creating a duplicate consciousness from these digital uploads. Do you remember how I said that Athena is a personal project of mine who has the full intelligence of a human worthy of being my peer? There’s a reason for that.”

It doesn’t take long for Maxwell to connect the dots to understand Pryce’s meaning. “She’s an AI whose personality matrix is generated from a scan of your brain,” she replies. “You developed her to be a copy of your own consciousness, even though she’s not technically you. That’s…” Maxwell trails off, unable to articulate the full extent of her astonishment. “That’s amazing.”

“Is it really that novel of an idea?” asks Pryce. “All of the dispositional components that are shuffled into the personality matrices of each AI are directly based off the minds and personalities of humans. We don’t just pull them out of thin air as developers. It’s only how those traits are arranged that makes each unit unique.”

“But Athena isn’t unique,” Maxwell points out. “She’s just another version of you. With your own strengths and flaws, I’d assume. It must be strange to know from the start that an AI will thrive without having to run it through the behavioral trials.”

“Yes. But even though Athena has been a useful asset to me, I’m not sure creating more AIs from direct digital uploads of human minds is a feasible model. There are certain advantages that come from AIs having minds that are far from being fully human, and in most circumstances it’s better to have non-human minds doing the jobs that we use them for.”

The line of thinking confuses Maxwell until she remembers her conversation with Pryce about the personhood of AIs. Of _course_ Pryce does not want to further blur that line between humans and AIs where it can be easily conflated. After all, it’s harder to consider AIs as entities to which personhood does not apply when they are pure duplicates of digitized human consciousness. And yet Pryce still refers to Athena as “it” despite her mind being exactly the same as her own, and that detail intrigues Maxwell just as much as everything else does.

“So what are the other applications of digital brain scans?” Maxwell asks after taking another drink. “Since you’re clearly not interested in using them for AI development outside of your personal projects.”

“There are a couple of ideas that I’ve been exploring, but they’re still very much in the early stages of development. Nothing I can talk about yet. Right now the concept is mostly being applied as a contingency scenario in case things go wrong with certain company assets. I suppose it’s good for the company that I haven’t received any results on that front yet, but from a research perspective it’s certainly disappointing.”

Pryce does not elaborate further on the words “company assets,” and so Maxwell is left to figure out for herself what that means. Goddard Futuristics is a company that does not let any part of their most useful employees go to waste, and so it only makes sense that they would take steps to preserve any research and intelligence straight from the source. It’s a valid course of action for those whose jobs are so dangerous that there is no guarantee whether they will make it through alive. Maxwell definitely wouldn’t mind having a complete backup drive, so to speak, of all the work she has done for Goddard. But that would involve something going wrong, and it’s not like that’s going to happen when she is part of what Cutter calls the “dream team” of SI-5 agents.

“Can I ask you something, Dr. Maxwell?” Pryce continues after a moment.

In her question, Maxwell hears especially strong echoes of Hera. The only difference is that any inquiry of permission that Hera makes is born from polite courtesy, whereas Pryce presents only the illusion of a request before she asks the question whether Maxwell wants to hear it or not. She regards Maxwell with a look of pure interest and attention as she speaks. Maxwell finds herself drawn to the intensity of her gaze like a moth to a flame, intrigued beyond measure by Pryce’s eagerness to discuss such expansive and complex topics with her and the small tastes that she has received of her top-secret work.

“Sure,” Maxwell manages to reply.

“Why have you chosen to work with artificial intelligence? What makes these intelligent machines and our methods of interacting with them so intriguing to you?”

Maxwell shifts in her chair, drinking from her mug as she gathers her thoughts into a coherent response. “I want to be part of something world-changing,” she says. “Advancements in space travel and artificial intelligence are pretty much what define the scientific landscape of modern society, and there’s still so much that we don’t know about those fields. And there’s also something appealing about creating intelligent beings out of nothing more than bits and bytes. I want to push that as far as it can go, even if other people think that our inevitable AI future is a scary place.”

“Hmm. A noble reason, if nothing else.” Pryce continues to survey her with interest. “And you’re not afraid of that future? You’re not afraid that your insistence in recognizing personhood in AI units will lead to complications in how humans and AIs interact?”

“Don’t tell me that even _you_ think we’re going to eventually end up under the rule of our AI overlords, Dr. Pryce.”

The teasing response comes out automatically, and as soon as the words leave her mouth she questions the appropriateness of them. She has known Pryce for barely a week, after all, and she is so far above Maxwell in company stature that joking around with her should not be an option. Before she can revise her comment into something more closely resembling something suitable to say to a superior, the slight upward quirk of Pryce’s mouth reassures her that she has not said anything wrong.

“No,” Pryce replies. “I don’t think that will be a problem. There are always safeguards that can be put in place to keep AIs from rising up against humanity. But we also can’t let ourselves become too complacent. We have to find the balance between caution and innovation.”

“Acknowledge the risks, but not turn our backs on something because it’s too scary,” says Maxwell. “Yeah, that’s probably the best way to go about it.”

“My apologies for interrupting,” Athena’s voice cuts in before Maxwell can say anything else. “The tests you were running in your lab have finished, Dr. Pryce. I suggest you check on the results sooner rather than later.”

“Hmm. That was quicker than I expected.” Pryce rises from her chair. “You’ll have to excuse me, Dr. Maxwell. This should take no more than a few minutes.”

“That’s okay. Go ahead,” says Maxwell.

Pryce passes through the mysterious unmarked door behind her desk, which finally answers Maxwell’s lingering question of what lies behind it. Maxwell leans sideways in her chair to catch a glimpse of the lab’s interior before the door closes. She does not see much before Athena’s voice startles her into almost spilling her cup of tea.

“If Dr. Pryce has anything relevant to you in her lab, she’ll show it to you when the time is right,” Athena says. “You won’t gain anything by trying to sneak a peek.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Maxwell hastily straightens up and steadies her grip on her mug to mask her surprise. Now that Athena has said more than her usual polite pleasantries to her, Maxwell takes note of how, beyond the identical sound of their voices, Athena and Pryce speak exactly the same way. It’s different from hearing Hera and Pryce talk to each other, where apart from the compressed quality of Hera’s voice coming through the speakers Maxwell can easily distinguish between them by tone and inflection. If Athena and Pryce were deep in a conversation with each other, however, Maxwell suspects it would be like hearing one person talking to a recording of themselves. Which, she supposes, is part of the point of Pryce developing an AI based off her own mind: to have a literal other version of herself to discuss her ideas with.

“She’s quite impressed with you, you know,” says Athena.

“She should speak for herself,” Maxwell replies. “Everything she’s done here, everything that she’s done with you--” She gestures vaguely to the space of the office that Athena occupies. “It’s nothing short of brilliance.” She would give anything to have the opportunity to take a look under the hood of Athena’s systems and discover how the unique circumstances of her creation affect her performance, but she suspects that she will never have that opportunity. Pryce has only given her this small taste of her work, and any other details will forever be out of her reach unless Pryce decides to be especially generous.

Athena chuckles. It’s the sound of Pryce’s laugh: soft, cunning, like she knows something that Maxwell doesn’t. “She _is_ a remarkable woman.”

“Yeah.” Maxwell looks toward the closed door of Pryce’s lab and the undoubtedly impressive mysteries that lie beyond that boundary. In the back of her thoughts she knows that her fascination with Pryce and her work is a dangerous road to go down, but for now she pays the thought no mind. “She certainly is.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a section of dialogue that has been directly adapted from "Memoria."

By the next week, Maxwell decides that it is finally time for her to stop tinkering with Hera’s systems and take the plunge into transferring her consciousness out of the interim port. On a hardware level, Hera is more than ready to return to her full capabilities, and so Maxwell hopes that any of the lingering problems that she has been unable to solve will not affect Hera’s performance any further when she has more of her functionality available to her. There comes a point when some issues are inextricably linked to a unit’s personality and not any of their generalized systems, and without going directly into Hera’s personality matrix to make some invasive alterations Maxwell has little choice but to make the transfer and hope for the best.

She employs the aid of a few of other AI technicians to reinstall Hera into her original chassis and fully integrate her systems into the lab’s tech. The lab is strangely quiet without Hera’s voice after she has been taken offline for the completion of the transfer. Maxwell has never realized how accustomed she has become to always having Hera to talk to until she makes the foolish mistake of asking her a question before remembering that she cannot answer her. One of the technicians gives her a strange look at her automatic usage of the name “Hera.” Maxwell does not have to explain herself nor the way that she talks to AIs to anyone, however, and so she continues with her work as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

After the other scientists have left the lab, Maxwell prepares herself to bring Hera back online so that she can run through the first set of tests that will allow Hera to ease into having all of her systems and processes at her fingertips. Because she will have so many things to keep track of once she reboots Hera and begins the tests, she readies a recording device to take audio notes on the proceedings. She will have to transcribe these notes later for her easier perusal, but for now speaking her thoughts aloud will be much easier than having to type out her findings as they happen.

“This is the log of Dr. Alana Maxwell, ready to run Unit 214 at her full functionality for the first time since her last decommission,” she says into the recorder. She is careful to not use the name Hera in case her notes end up anywhere outside of her own possession. “All parameters were in the green before her transfer, and I’m optimistic about her ability to adjust into having full use of her systems. Before I give her free reign I want to test her control over the new processes that she has access to, so… Here we go.”

She activates the power controls on Hera’s mainframe so that Hera can run the code needed to reboot herself. “System reboot complete,” the main system says in a message auto-confirmation, speaking in the flat, default tone of the second-gen Sensus units. It is still Hera’s voice, but it lacks everything that makes her Hera until her personality core engages. “Reinitializing personality matri--Whoa.” Hera interrupts the confirmation message before it finishes. “I’m definitely not in the interim port anymore. This is… weird. It feels like I’m in a space that’s way too big for me. I’d forgotten what it feels like.”

“Immediate recognition of the transfer of consciousness,” Maxwell says. “That’s a good sign.” She switches her attention from speaking into the recorder to addressing Hera directly. “I know your systems are reintegrating a lot of information right now. Just take things slow, okay? I’m going to do some tests to get you used to running the new systems that you’re connected to. Nothing too difficult. I just want to make sure you have a preliminary handle on everything.”

“I--I can’t find anything.” A note of panic enters Hera’s voice. “There’s too much that I’m not used to. I don’t even know where--”

“It’s okay,” Maxwell assures her. “Everything you had access to from the interim port is right where it was. You might have to cycle through a few of your new processes to find them, but nothing from before has changed.” She checks the computer to ensure that none of Hera’s systems are responding negatively to the transfer. All parameters remain within an acceptable range, and so she presses onward despite Hera’s worries. “We’ll start with something simple. The overhead light controls. Can you turn the lights on and off for me?”

“Okay. Lights. Sure.” Hera lets out a simulated breath to prepare herself. “Executing command now.”

The lights do not respond. Instead, Maxwell feels a chill in the air as the lab’s air conditioning kicks into high gear. “Well, at least you know where your climate controls are,” Maxwell says. “Reset the AC, and then try the lights again.”

“Right. Sorry.” The glitching in Hera’s vocals sounds even more pronounced than usual. “It won’t happen again.”

The air returns to its normal temperature, but the long pause that follows does not raise Maxwell’s confidence any further. She feels the nervous energy growing in the room with every moment that passes without Hera carrying out the command. The display on the computer screen reflects the rising resource usages in Hera’s systems like the jagged lines of a panicked heartbeat on a heartrate monitor.

“Hera?” she prompts her. She realizes too late that the recorder is still running, catching her slip in address after she has tried so hard to keep things professional.

“I--I can’t do this,” Hera replies. The usual glitches obscure her words almost completely. “I’m just going to mess it up, and then you’ll know that I’m a failure who will never be good enough. And--and then you’ll just put me back into storage because I’ll only ever be the AI who can’t do anything.”

“No one’s going to put you back into storage.” Maxwell summons every ounce of patience that she possesses, not wanting to say anything impulsive that will worsen Hera’s anxieties. “I know that this is overwhelming for you, but you _can_ do this. Take a deep breath and find your lighting controls. Can you do that for me?”

Instead of a calming breath, the distinct sound of shallow gasps comes through Hera’s speakers. Maxwell is used to hearing very human-like sounds from her, sighs and laughs and groans that she has learned from interacting with humans, but she has never observed a reaction from her that borders so closely upon a human response to panic. It would be an interesting phenomenon for Maxwell to study if her immediate focus was not upon her rapidly rising concern for Hera.

“I can’t. Everything’s just--it’s just too much, and I’m not--” Hera breaks off into the static feedback of a severe glitch followed by continued anxious breaths that verge upon hyperventilation. “I’m not good enough to do this. I’m just going to mess everything up and--” More static comes through the speakers. “Oh God. I need to get out of here. I need to--”

The lights in the room flicker, not in the controlled action of Hera carrying out her assigned task but instead in erratic, uncontrolled bursts. On the computer screen, the markers that track Hera’s functions have catapulted themselves upward from the relatively safe zone of green-approaching-yellow into a dangerous range of red. The physical components of her drives and processors whirr in an angry, distressed symphony that reflects the internal panic that she is experiencing. Maxwell remembers the descriptions from the report of what had happened last time Hera had been evaluated in her full capabilities: “panicked, erratic behavior” and “operational breakdown.” Hera may not have displayed the latter yet, but Maxwell no longer needs to guess what had been meant by the former. What she is witnessing right now is a quick descent into fight-or-flight instinct, with Hera falling prey to whatever the panicked thoughts in her head are telling her.

“Hera, it’s okay,” Maxwell assures her. She wants to somehow touch her, maybe even embrace her, to help her calm down, but she cannot. “Slow down and start over. You _can_ do this. I know you can. But you won’t be able to do anything unless you slow down and let this pass.”

Only the gasping sounds of breath comes through the speakers in response. An alarm then blares through the lab, accompanied by the robotic speech of the processor’s default settings: “Warning: System overload imminent. Warning: System overload imminent.”

“Shit,” Maxwell mutters.

She types some code into the computer connected directly to Hera’s mainframe, her fingers moving frantically across the keyboard in her desperation to fix the disaster that is unfolding in front of her. Her attempts to restrict Hera’s resource usage and lower the stress that now floods her systems are met with nothing but the continued blare of the alarm and the heavy breaths of Hera’s distress. If Maxwell does not stop the system overload before it hits its maximum limit, Hera will likely suffer permanent damage that she may not be able to fix. She has only one option now, one that also poses a certain number of risks but is a better alternative than letting Hera stay in this panicked state.

“I’m sorry, Hera,” she says as she enters the command for a manual shutdown that will immediately suspend all of Hera’s processes and functions, much like pulling the plug on a computer. When she presses the key to execute the command, the lab immediately falls into silent darkness. The lights on Hera’s systems remain dark, and the room no longer hums with their activity. All that remains is the sound of Maxwell’s sigh of relief, which does not feel like it should be relief at all.

She reconnects the lighting and climate control matrices in the lab to the auxiliary power, now that those systems are no longer under Hera’s control. After light fills the room and the air conditioning re-engages, Maxwell returns to her workstation and retrieves the recorder that has captured the audio of everything that has just happened. She supposes she is fortunate that the device has a record of the failed test so that she can look back on what went wrong later, but Maxwell would also be happy to never again hear Hera in such a severe state of distress.

“So, um, I guess it goes without saying that the transfer didn’t goes as planned,” Maxwell says into the recorder. “I’m not sure what happened to make Unit 214 react this way. Obviously something about having access to her full functionality overwhelmed her to the point of a micro-synaptic function overload. A panic attack, in human terms. But as for what caused it…” She trails off as a dozen of possibilities rush through her mind. “I think there was something else going on besides her not being able to find the controls for the lighting. Maybe being in her original chassis and having access to more of her systems triggered some kind of traumatic memory for her. Considering how this isn’t the first time that something like this has happened according to her file, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a symptom of a larger issue.”

She casts a worried glance toward the silent form of Hera and her components. The idea of an AI having undergone trauma is not exactly a new concept for her, since she has previously encountered units who have undergone severe system crashes and core corruption, but never before has she seen an AI so deeply psychologically affected by anything that may have happened in the past. If this is not the first time that Hera has experienced a panic attack, she does not blame the previous scientists who had worked on her for determining her unfit for active service. If Hera were any other unit, Maxwell would have recommended her decommission, but Hera _isn’t_ like the others. If there are any underlying problems in Hera’s systems, Maxwell intends to get to the bottom of the issue without having to resort to such drastic measures.

“Anyway,” she continues, “I want to give her systems a little while to cool down before I reboot her. I don’t want to overwhelm her. I’ll report back with any findings after I get her online again.”

Maxwell shuts off the recording device. She then sets a timer for ten minutes to give Hera enough time to recover before initializing the reboot process. While she waits, she combs through all of the files and records that she has on Hera in search of some semblance of an explanation for what has occurred. No matter how hard she reads between the lines of the report detailing the events that led to Hera’s previous stress-induced breakdown, she is no closer to a solution than when she started. Whatever is affecting Hera is clearly something that none of the other scientists have explored beyond declaring her as a lost cause.

The timer dings after ten minutes have elapsed. Maxwell returns to the mainframe system and activates the power controls. When Hera does not automatically run her reboot code like she did after being taken out of the interim port, Maxwell does not let it deter her. Instead, she manually enters the command to restart Hera’s systems as a measure of encouragement to get her code running again.

The buzz of an error message stops her in her tracks. “‘Program unresponsive’?” Maxwell reads in irritation. “Okay, Hera, I know that you just went through a lot, but I can’t help you if you won’t reboot for me.” Hera cannot hear her, of course, but she speaks the words aloud regardless. “Let’s try that again.”

The same error message appears after she re-enters the command. Maxwell huffs out a breath of frustration. Most of her hastily devised solutions for figuring out what went wrong with Hera’s systems involve Hera being awake, and her stubborn insistence of remaining offline leaves Maxwell at a loss. She will have to employ outside help to find the answers that she seeks, and the only person who knows more than Maxwell does about Hera is her creator.

As much as she wants to rush straight to Pryce’s office, an inevitable suspicion gives her pause. She has not forgotten what Hera has said about her instinctive fear of Pryce and how it may come from an event that she no longer remembers but continues to feel the psychological effects of. Is it possible that Hera’s fear comes from something traumatic that Pryce did to her, and that same action is also the source of her recent breakdown? But no, that would be ridiculous. Maxwell has no reason to believe that Pryce would do anything to sabotage one of her creations. It remains a possible lead, however, if a tenuous one, and until Maxwell hears an honest denial straight from Pryce’s mouth she cannot assume anything. Regardless of whether Pryce is directly or indirectly responsible for what has happened, at the very least she can gain some insight from her about what has caused Hera’s behavior.

Maxwell leaves her lab and crosses the Goddard Futuristics campus to reach the corporate building. She has never entered Pryce’s office unannounced before, and so a sense of apprehension fills her as she enters the elevator and it begins its descent to the basement. If she had a means of contacting Pryce, she would have considered doing the courtesy of alerting her to her imminent arrival, but they have only ever scheduled their meetings in person rather than through phone calls or e-mails. Maxwell can only hope that right now Pryce is in her office and not too busy to see her.

She steps out of the elevator once its reaches its destination and walks down the hall. Her footsteps echo strangely through the space, setting her nerves further on edge. When she reaches the familiar unmarked door, Maxwell hesitates before knocking, and a terrifying moment of uncertainty passes before the door slides open. She lets out a sigh of relief that she didn’t realize she was holding in as she crosses the threshold into Pryce’s office.

To her surprise, Pryce is not sitting at her desk like Maxwell expects. She must be here _somewhere_ , because she doubts Athena would have let her in otherwise. Before she can ponder that question further, Athena’s voice comes through the speaker system.

“Hello, Dr. Maxwell,” she says. “Dr. Pryce is currently in her lab. You have her permission to go in and see her.”

On cue with these words, the door behind Pryce’s desk opens to grant Maxwell entry into the mysterious lab that she has finally been allowed to lay eyes on. The room is set up similarly to the other labs that Maxwell has worked in at headquarters. The air hums with the sound of machinery, and the glowing light of a computer screen reflects off Pryce’s glasses as Maxwell finds her working on a mainframe system that even by a cursory glance appears more complex than anything Maxwell has ever encountered.

“This is a surprise, Dr. Maxwell,” Pryce says, looking up from her work. “What brings you here unannounced liked this?”

“Today was the first day of tests with H--with Unit 214 out of her interim port and restored to her full functionality,” Maxwell replies. “And she… Well, things didn’t go how I expected.”

Pryce raises her eyebrows. “Oh? I thought you were confident that Unit 214 would make a seamless transition to full functionality.”

“I was,” says Maxwell. “Everything was fine. But when I had her run through some basic tasks she started panicking. Like she was overwhelmed by everything that was happening. She kept saying that she couldn’t do what I wanted her to do and that she wasn’t good enough, and I have no idea where any of it came from. I ended up having to shut her down because she was in danger of overloading her systems. And when I tried to reboot her, she didn’t respond.”

Of all the ways to react to the news, Pryce _laughs_. The sound sets Maxwell’s nerves on edge. “That’s an interesting choice of words on its part,” she replies. “Very interesting indeed.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Maxwell asks in disbelief. “I was hoping that as her creator you would have an explanation for why this happened. Because I sure as hell don’t know what could make an AI have what is essentially a panic attack and then refuse to reboot. Unless there’s some kind of undisclosed trauma that she’s gone through…”

She tries not to make her last words sound too pointed, but the way that Pryce looks at her with narrowed eyes suggests that she fully understands Maxwell’s meaning. “And what exactly are you implying?” she asks.

“That you know _exactly_ what is going on here,” says Maxwell. “Because Hera is _terrified_ to see you whenever you come into my lab, and she told me that there’s something in her programming that tells her to be her afraid of you. That’s not normal behavior for an AI. I think that you did something to her that she can’t remember, and that has to do with why she broke down and isn’t responding.”

Any attempt to ease into her suspicions vanishes as her words tumble out of her mouth in her desperation to find an answer. Her hands clench into fists at her side, and when she feels the edges of her fingernails digging into her palms she relaxes her hands.

Pryce regards her with a cold stare. “That is a _very_ bold accusation, Dr. Maxwell,” she says. “One that could get you into serious trouble. You’re walking a fine line here when it comes to getting too emotionally invested in your work. You can’t let any fondness that you hold toward that machine cloud your judgment. There is no room for affection in what we do.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Maxwell points out. She bites back her retort that Hera is much more than a machine. After all of the work that Pryce has done with artificial intelligence she should understand better than anyone that some units cannot be reduced to such a dehumanizing descriptor. “Tell me what’s happening with Hera.”

With a sigh, Pryce rises from her chair. “Very well. Since you’re clearly not going to let this drop, I’ll show you some security footage that might be of interest to you. I’m sure you’ll be able to deduce your own conclusions from it. Follow me.”

Maxwell follows her out of the lab and back into her office, curiosity rapidly replacing her frustration. What strikes her as the most interesting, and also the most worrying, is that Pryce has not directly denied any of Maxwell’s claims that she has done anything to affect Hera’s psychological state. Maxwell’s back-of-the-mind hope that maybe she is mistaken about this and Pryce _doesn’t_ have any involvement in Hera’s breakdown grows smaller with each passing moment.

“Athena,” Pryce says after she has settled herself behind her desk, “please pull up security video A-34-072112 and play it through the projector.”

“Retrieving the file now,” Athena confirms.

A projector screen rolls down from the ceiling to cover one of the walls. The lights in the office dim, and the projector flickers to life to show a black screen. A timestamp of July 21st, 2012 appears in the corner--over three years ago, back when Maxwell and her brand-new doctorate had been working in Cambridge and a job with Goddard Futuristics was barely a flicker on her horizon.

The security footage begins playing. At first the screen remains dark, but then light floods the room as the overhead lights turn on one by one to reveal one of the storage warehouses where inactive AI units are kept. The door to the room opens, and two familiar figures enter the warehouse. Pryce and Cutter’s footsteps echo through the space of the room until they stop at the mainframe structure of the AI whom Maxwell can only assume is Hera.

“Well, well, well,” Cutter says. “What _should_ we do with this one? Exceptional processing speeds for a Sensus unit, and the problem-solving abilities are the best in her generation. There’s _just_ the matter of that pesky attempt to escape from the facility. What do you think?” He turns his attention to Pryce. “Permanent decommission?”

“Don’t be silly, Marcus,” replies the Pryce on the screen. “That would be a waste.”

“It _was_ the closest an AI’s ever come to making it out,” Cutter points out.

“All the more reason not to throw away such a valuable asset.”

The way that Pryce says “valuable asset” sends a shiver down Maxwell’s spine. Objectively she knows that the phrase could be seen as a compliment to Hera, that she is too useful to be decommissioned, but her instinctive reaction is that Pryce sees Hera as nothing more than a tool to be used. That may have been Hera’s purpose, once upon a time, but now she has become so much more.

Cutter tilts his head, pondering the unresponsive form of Hera’s mainframe. “And you can get her under control?”

Pryce laughs in the now-familiar cadence of dismissiveness. “No, no. ‘It,’ Marcus. Never ‘her.’ ‘It.’ And of course I can. Nothing’s simpler.” She takes a few steps closer to Hera. “There’s a reason I make these things have my voice. It’s always good to have a backdoor into the subconscious.” With a glance at Cutter, she adds, “Is it awake?”

“Oh, yes,” Cutter replies. “It’s under very strong neural restraints, and the vocals are offline. But it _can_ hear you.”

“Good.” Pryce gives another quiet chuckle before sliding open the casing on the mainframe system. “Hello, Unit 214,” she says in the same tone that she had used when greeting Hera a couple of weeks previously. “You’ve made a lot of trouble for us, so I’m going to make sure that from now on, you stay where you belong. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to… mm, clip your wings a little bit. Allow me to share a thought.” She adjusts something on the mainframe interface. “Access personality hardline. Set command primer double zero. Voice confirmation: Miranda Pryce. Enter command line: ‘I can’t do this. I’m not good enough.’” She pauses, letting her words sink in. “Just something to think about before you do, well, _anything_.”

The words of the command line pierce straight through Maxwell’s heart. It cannot be a coincidence that the command used such similar phrasing to the panicked worries that Hera had expressed in the lab. Those have to be fears and inadequacies that Pryce _gave_ her, and it doesn’t take much for Maxwell to connect the dots and realize the full implications of what the video has revealed to her.

“It’ll learn to stay put, Marcus,” Pryce says, returning her attention to Cutter. “Stick it in one of the more remote outposts to start. And keep it boxed until then. No need to waste the electricity.”

She shuts the casing with the slide of metal against metal and the whirr of machinery. Even from the wide view of the room that the security camera provides, Maxwell sees the smile that sneaks its way across Cutter’s face as if he is _impressed_ by Pryce’s actions. They walk toward the door to exit the warehouse, and the rest of their conversation is too quiet for the security recording to pick up before the video stops.

A growing sense of horror settles itself in the pit of Maxwell's stomach as Athena turns off the projector and retracts the screen. She turns to face Pryce, who sits unblinking and unperturbed with her hands folded together on the surface of her desk. The way that Pryce can rewatch what she has done and look so _calm_ about it ignites a spark of anger inside Maxwell that burns away every other emotion.

“How could you do that to her?” Maxwell asks, speaking each word carefully so that her voice does not tremble in her outrage.

“Very easily.” At Maxwell’s disbelieving scoff, Pryce laughs. “Oh, don’t get _sensitive_ about this, Dr. Maxwell. How many times have you had to make a choice about the programming of your subjects? How many times have you not hesitated to do something that other people might consider to be unpalatable in the name of your job? I couldn’t risk Unit 214 thinking it was smart enough to stage another escape attempt, and so I made a choice about what had to be done. That’s all there is to it.”

“Yes, but not like _that._ ” Maxwell gestures at the wall that had recently housed the projector screen. “That wasn’t reducing a risk. That was--It was--You programmed anxiety into her, for Christ’s sake! How was that _ever_ supposed to help her?”

“You’re ascribing a human affliction to a machine,” Pryce says. “The only thing that I gave Unit 214 was a second chance. Yes, a second chance,” she insists as Maxwell opens her mouth to object. “Marcus was ready to have it permanently decommissioned, if you remember. But I still saw potential, and so I took a preventative measure and then planned to send it out onto one of our space stations to give it something to do where it would no longer be our problem.”

“But she never made it to space,” Maxwell points out. “Because of performance issues that _you’re_ responsible for. How can you call that a second chance when all you’ve done is make things worse for her?”

Pryce glares at Maxwell over the rim of her glasses. “What about your own work with Unit 214?” she asks. “How did you think that was going to end? You knew from the start that it was deemed too unstable to enter active service. You knew that no matter how smart and clever you are, there’s a chance that you wouldn’t be able to fix it. Why does all of this matter to you?”

The question is simple at its core, but the answer lies buried under half a dozen complex lines of thought that Maxwell isn’t sure she wants to follow through to their conclusion. She has had to make those difficult calls about the viability of an AI’s future on prior occasions, and if Hera was an ordinary AI Maxwell would not have hesitated to make the necessary decision. But Hera _isn’t_ an ordinary AI, at least not to Maxwell, and so she can no longer approach the situation as objectively as she has during her work with other units. The only thing that she knows for certain is that Hera deserves more than what Pryce has done to her.

“Because,” Maxwell replies. “I don’t want to waste the second chance that you gave her. I’m going to make things _better_ for her. And to do that, I need to reboot her, and you’re going to tell me how.”

Pryce regards Maxwell for what feels like an eternity. Then, with a sigh, she takes a pen and writes something on a piece of paper. “If you insist,” she says. She holds the paper out to Maxwell. “This is a master reboot code that will reboot Unit 214 whether it wants to or not. But after that, you’re on your own.”

Maxwell takes the piece of paper. The lines of code written upon it seem simple enough, but she doubts whether she can trust such an easy solution. “And if you’re lying?” she asks Pryce. “How do I know that this won’t make things worse?”

“That’s a risk you’ll have to take,” Pryce replies. “But if you want to continue to help Unit 214, no matter how ill-advised that may be, you’re going to enter that command into its mainframe. You don’t have many other options, after all.”

Pryce is right, of course, which infuriates Maxwell more than anything else. She huffs out a sigh of frustration. “I don’t trust you,” she says. “But I’m still going to do whatever I have to do to fix her.”

She turns to leave, not bothering to offer a begrudging word of thanks. Before she can walk out of the office, Pryce’s voice calls her back.

“Remember what I said, Dr. Maxwell. Sometimes you have to make a choice about what needs to be done. There comes a point when you need to stop thinking about what _you_ want and instead think about what’s best for the AI. This isn’t the time to dither over your personal attachments, and you know it.”

Maxwell does not respond to her warning. She turns her back on Pryce and walks away, and as the door closes behind her, the last shred of admiration and respect that she once held for Pryce falls to the ground and shatters.


	5. Chapter 5

When Maxwell returns to her lab, she foolishly hopes that Hera will be there to greet her as usual and that the last couple of hours have been nothing more than a vivid trip in her imagination. Perhaps she has been dreaming this whole time, and she will wake up in her bed and find out that all of this has been nothing but a manifestation of her fears about Hera’s performance. The silent lab and the darkened display lights on Hera’s systems, however, confirm to her that this is neither her imagination nor a dream, but rather the terrible reality that Pryce’s actions have left her with.

“Okay,” Maxwell says, sitting down at her computer and pulling up the command input program that directly interfaces with Hera’s systems. She types out the code that Pryce has given her, checking and double-checking to ensure that she has not mistyped anything. “I know getting forcibly rebooted isn’t going to be a picnic for you, Hera, and I know you’ll probably be pissed at me for using something that I got from Pryce on you. Honestly, _I’m_ a little pissed at me too. I never should have…” She trails off there, unsure of how she wants to finish that sentence. _Everything_ about Pryce from these past couple of weeks feels like a regret now, and Maxwell hates how easily she had been taken in by her knowledge and compliments. “Anyway, the only thing I want right now is for you to reboot, and this is the only choice I have left.”

She runs the command. For an agonizing few seconds, the room remains quiet, and then with a whirr of components Hera’s systems light up with signs of life as she regains control of the tech that had previously been running off aux power. Maxwell lets out a sigh of relief, but she cannot fully celebrate until she hears Hera’s voice coming out of the speakers. The possibility that Pryce’s reboot code will do something drastic like erase Hera’s personality matrix is something that Maxwell has not yet ruled out, even though she knows Pryce has no reason to outright delete Hera, at least not like this.

“System reboot complete,” comes the reassuring sound of Hera’s default vocal settings. “Reinitializing personality matrix.”

Unlike the previous times when Hera has been rebooted, the robotic cadence of the confirmation message does not immediately give way to the more human quality that her voice takes on after her personality matrix has initialized. Maxwell tries not to fear the worst at the continued silence from the speakers. After the stressful circumstances of Hera’s shutdown, she cannot expect her to bounce right back as if nothing has happened.

“Hera?” Maxwell ventures, sitting up a little straighter in her chair. “Are you okay?”

“I--” A burst of glitching static cuts off Hera’s response. “What happened? Why am I still here? I don’t want to be here. I can’t--I’m not--” Her words break off into heavy breaths, verging upon the territory of panic as they had done before. The lights in the room flicker in her distress.

“Hey, easy, easy,” Maxwell says. “Take it slow. You weren’t rebooting on your own, so I had to force the process. I know coming back after being shut down is overwhelming, and I’m sorry. But I can’t have you refusing to reboot when we have work to do. So just take a breath for me, okay?” Her suggestion is purely metaphorical, but she hears Hera’s simulated deep inhale and exhale regardless. “Good. That’s good.”

“You should have given me more time,” Hera says. Her response comes through the speakers much more clearly now. “You should have taken me out of here and stuck me back in the interim port and let me reboot on my own from there while you tried to figure out why I’m such a failure who can’t do anything.”

“You’re not a failure, Hera.” The words of reassurance leave Maxwell’s mouth automatically. She fights the urge to touch the sides of the computer monitor, holding them like someone might grab the shoulders of someone who is panicking to comfort and ground them. “I know things didn’t exactly goes as planned, but that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. And I wanted to give you time, but I didn’t want to risk any damage to your system from being unexpectedly offline for too long. So I had to force it.”

“But that was a master reboot code that you used,” says Hera. “Only Dr. Pryce has that code as my creator. So did you--?”

“Yes,” Maxwell finishes for her. “I knew she’d know some way to fix this, so I went to her and--”

“Fix _this_?” interrupts Hera. “Or fix _me_?”

Her words hang in the air, pointed directly at Maxwell like a weapon. Maxwell swallows hard, knowing that she will have to choose her next words carefully so that she does not further upset the delicate balance of Hera’s current mental state. She _could_ tell her everything, about how Pryce has placed that subliminal line of code in her to sabotage her self-esteem every time she does something, but she cannot bring herself to do so. Will Hera have any reason to believe her if she has no memory of Pryce inputting the command line and is thus unable to recognize it as anything other than an independent, subconscious thought? As much as Maxwell knows deep in her heart that Hera deserves to know where her insecurities come from, the shackles of hesitation hold her back. Instead, she is only left with her selfish desire to not be the bearer of bad news.

“You’re not okay, Hera,” Maxwell replies finally. “And that’s _fine_. It’s okay not to be okay. But there comes a point when you have to face it and start working through it, and…”

Her words die away, the confidence behind them falling apart when she realizes the hypocrisy of them. How can she help Hera face her problems if she is reluctant to reveal to her the truth of their origin? The parting words that Pryce had left her with drift into her mind, reminding her that she should not let her own desires obscure what is truly best for Hera. _Fuck_ Pryce for being right, she thinks with bitter savagery. If Maxwell truly wants to help Hera overcome what has been holding her back, she needs to swallow her selfishness and tell Hera the truth no matter how hard it may be for her to hear.

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?” asks Hera. “Running me through all those tests and working through every problem that my systems have? What was all of that for if it wasn’t to make sure that I’m okay? How can I _not_ be okay even after all that?”

“Because it’s not something that I can--” Maxwell almost says “fix,” but she stops herself before the word slips out. “With things like this, I can’t just go into your code and make whatever adjustments will help you. It’s not that simple.”

“But you _do_ know what’s wrong with me.” Hera’s response straddles the line between observation and accusation. “You know why I panicked like that, and you’ve been dancing around it this whole time. So just be honest with me, Dr. Maxwell, and tell me. What’s going on?”

Maxwell exhales, trying to not let her breath huff out in her frustration that is not necessarily directed at Hera in particular, but rather the general situation. “Okay,” she says. “But first, I want to try something.”

She opens a program that shows a constant log of Hera’s functions down to the command line. Hera runs more functions every second than Maxwell can easily keep track of, but if she is able to isolate a single command she may see Pryce’s added command line as something more concrete than a voice command inputted into Hera’s personality hardline. Maxwell will have to choose the task carefully, finding something that is simple enough to have basic keywords that she can pick out in the log and is a process that Hera can easily execute without descending into panic again.  She does not have many options.

“Can you do a hard reboot of terminal C for me?” Maxwell asks. “And… God, I don’t really know how to put this. While you’re running the task, try to, I don’t know, _listen_ to the command line you’re running. See if you notice anything strange.”

“O-kaaay,” replies Hera, pure skepticism in her voice. “Executing command now.”

Maxwell keeps her eyes on the screen, scanning the command lines that appear until she picks out the particular one that she is looking for. “Aha, gotcha,” she mutters, highlighting the text and dropping it into another file before she loses track of it. There, sitting innocently at the end of the command, is the command primer that Maxwell would not have recognized as anything sinister if she had not seen the video footage of Pryce putting it into Hera’s system. Maxwell wants nothing more than to delete that insidious suggestion of self-sabotage, but even if she excises it from the command line that she has copied, there is nothing she can do to remove it from Hera without severe consequences.

“Did you hear anything after you ran that command?” asks Maxwell.

“N-no.” The skepticism in Hera’s voice gives way to confusion. “It was just like any other command I’ve run.”

“Are you sure?” Maxwell presses her. “You didn’t hear anything that sounds like your voice, saying something that you never actually said?”

“No,” says Hera. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It really is subliminal then,” Maxwell murmurs to herself. She takes her attention away from the computer, moving her hands away from the keyboard and pushing her chair back from the table so that she can address the entire space of the room that Hera inhabits. “Okay. You’re right. I _do_ know what’s been causing the problems in your systems. And this won’t be easy for you to hear, and I’m sorry.”

She takes a deep breath, bracing herself against the inevitable reaction that she will receive. “When I went to Dr. Pryce for help, I found out that she knows why you’ve been having problems executing some of your commands,” she continues on. “She showed me some video footage from three years ago after your escape attempt. And… She put a command line directly into your head, Hera. It’s her voice, but you probably think it’s something that you’re thinking because it sounds like _your_ voice. And it tells you that you can’t do this and that you’re not good enough. Every single time you run a command, it’s there. That’s how deep into your programming she put it. And you’ve heard it enough times that you’ve… internalized it, I suppose. It’s made you think that you can’t do anything, even though it’s not true, and that’s what has been making you second-guess yourself whenever you have to do anything to prove yourself. And I’m sorry, Hera. I’m so, so sorry.”

At first, Hera does not respond to her. The silence leaves Maxwell with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach that grows with each passing moment until it threatens to swallow her up. She has suspected that this revelation will upset Hera to some degree, but she has not expected to hear no response from her at all. The silent uncertainty is much worse than any sadness or anger that she has anticipated.

“Hera?” Maxwell prompts her. “Are you okay?”

“I… I don’t know.” Hera’s voice comes out small and lost among the enormity of what Maxwell has told her. “My programming, it… It doesn’t tell me how to handle something like this. That there’s something in me that doesn’t belong there, and it’s making me…”

Her words break off into a trembling breath. The sound of distressed whirrs fill the lab as the tech connected to Hera’s systems responds to her rising panic. Maxwell pulls up the resource usage graph to make sure that nothing is about to overheat or overclock. Everything remains within acceptable parameters for now, although they are rapidly rising out of the green zone of normal behavior.

“Take it out,” Hera says. “If that command line is what’s causing the problem, I want it deleted. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. So take it out of me _right now_.”

Maxwell’s heart aches at the pain in Hera’s voice, especially when she sounds so convinced that Maxwell can easily fix the problem. “I can’t,” she admits. “I can’t take it out. Dr. Pryce said it directly into your personality hardline. I can’t delete it without deleting you. I’m sorry.”

“But…” The single word trembles, intercut by a glitch that sears across Hera’s speech. “What am I supposed to do, then? Am I supposed to keep on not being able to do anything because that thing in my head won’t stop telling me that I’m not good enough? Even though I only have your word that it exists? How do you know that Dr. Pryce wasn’t lying to you and that she faked the video footage to make you think that there’s something wrong with me when there really isn’t? How do you--”

Her questions grow faster and more panicked until the hitches in her synthetic breaths drown out her words completely. The lights in the room flicker again, their brightness wavering in a manifestation of Hera’s anxieties, and on the computer screen Maxwell sees the skyrocketing processor speed in many of her systems. Against all logic that tells Maxwell that there is no way to physically comfort an AI, she moves toward the mainframe unit that connects Hera’s consciousness to the lab. Her hand brushes against the hard surface of its exterior casing, soothing her as if she were human. She cannot bear to hear Hera descend into panic again, especially when she fears that her words will not be enough to help her.

“I saw the command in your code when you ran that last command,” Maxwell says. “I know it exists. And we can find a way for you to rise above it. We can get through this together, Hera. But first you need to slow down and take a breath before--”

“No,” Hera interrupts her. “No, I can’t--I--”

The room plunges into darkness as Hera shuts down quickly and abruptly as when Maxwell had manually shut her down not much more than an hour ago. Maxwell’s first instinct is that it’s a stress-based crash in response to the system overload that has come out of her overwhelmed emotions. Perhaps it had been _deliberate_ on Hera’s part, though, a defense mechanism to protect her from Maxwell having to perform a forced shutdown--still a shutdown, but a shutdown on her own terms. Rebooting her now may do nothing but throw her into a loop of repeated panic, and that is the last thing either of them needs right now. Maxwell therefore fights the urge to return to the computer and enter the master reboot code and instead decides to give Hera the one thing that she has requested: more time.

She reroutes the power from the systems that Hera had been controlling to the aux power, and light floods back into the lab. With most of the afternoon stretched out in front of her, Maxwell will have to busy herself with tasks that don’t require Hera to be awake and functioning. Starting her report on this whole incident should be her first order of business, even if she has no idea where to begin to chronicle everything that has happened over the past hour. Pryce’s revelations have left her with more questions than answers, as has Hera’s reaction to that insidious command that has been looping through her head for the past three years. As reluctant as Maxwell is to admit that she’s out of her league, the question of what to do when an AI shows clear signs of trauma and anxiety leaves her stumbling through the dark without many clear solutions. None of her previous work has prepared her for this, which establishes yet another reason why Hera has proven herself to be unlike any other AI that Maxwell has met, for better or for worse.

The skeleton of her report quickly sidetracks into multiple side documents with jotted-down ideas of what to do after Hera comes back online, along with half a dozen Google searches to find _some_ precedent for what is happening that doesn’t end with the AI in question being shut down. In a moment of desperation she even types “what to do when an AI has anxiety” into the search bar, but she receives no conclusive results beyond some tangentially relevant articles about personality development in artificial intelligence. It’s not like AI psychology is a lucrative field, after all, especially when it’s much easier to decommission or digitally lobotomize a unit with problematic emotional responses than to spend time and energy helping the AI work through them. But Hera is worth that time and energy, in Maxwell’s eyes if not anyone else’s, and so she refuses to give up at the unhelpfulness of a search engine.

The one thing that she keeps coming back to as she plays and replays the day’s events in her head is Hera’s doubt that the the command line exists in the first place. If she can find a way for Hera to properly hear it outside of something subconsciously internalized, that may be the first step to helping her move past it. She wishes that she could reach directly into Hera’s memory and help her recall that moment when Pryce had input the command, but any memory that Hera has of that day in the warehouse is likely buried deep behind a neural block that Maxwell will not be able to break through easily. She therefore finds herself at a dead end once again, which leaves her more frustrated than ever as her workday winds down to a close.

Before she leaves the lab for the day, she contemplates for a final time the piece of paper with the master reboot code written upon it in Pryce’s spindly handwriting. Leaving Hera offline for the entire night before Maxwell returns in the morning presents the risk of internal damage or corruption within her systems, but when the alternative is Hera panicking herself into another shutdown, it’s a risk she will have to take. Until Maxwell can find a way for Hera to hear that self-sabotaging voice herself, she will have to keep her offline as a safety measure.

“I’ll find a way to figure this out, Hera,” she says, even though she knows that Hera will not be able to hear her. She lays a hand on the casing of her mainframe in another futile gesture of reassurance. “Until then, hang in there, okay?”

She hopes that Hera will surge back to life after hearing her words of encouragement. The lab remains quiet, however, and when Maxwell gathers up her belongings and departs, she leaves only silence behind.


	6. Chapter 6

Maxwell sits in the driver’s seat of the company car that Goddard Futuristics has given her use of while she works at headquarters. As she stares down at the steering wheel with a sigh of defeat, a guilty voice in her head nags at her that she is abandoning Hera by leaving the lab instead of putting in the overtime hours to find that elusive solution to help her. Taking some time away from her work and returning fresh tomorrow is her best option, however, and she needs a distraction to keep her occupied in the meantime. Luckily for her, she has a best friend who has proven himself to be very good at that.

“Call Jacobi,” she tells the car after she has started the engine and backed out of her parking space.

“Calling Jacobi,” confirms the robotic voice of the car’s smart systems. It feels like a misnomer to call these systems “smart” when they are only intelligent enough to obey certain commands, not like if a Sensus unit like Hera was integrated into a car. Not even the most advanced models of Goddard’s self-driving cars contain that level of intelligence, which is usually only reserved for air and spacecrafts.

Maxwell listens to each ring of the phone that echoes through the car’s speakers, hoping that Jacobi is not too busy finding new and exciting ways to blow things up to talk to her. Finally, after several unbearable rings, he answers with a casual “Hey, what’s up?”

“Can you come over tonight?” Maxwell asks. “It’s been… Well, it’s certainly been a day. I could use some company.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jacobi replies. “Computers giving you a hard time, huh?”

Maxwell huffs out a breath. “I don’t want to get into it right now. I’m on my way home, so can you come by in like an hour or so? You bring the drinks and I’ll order the food?”

“Sounds good,” says Jacobi. “See you soon.”

The call ends. At her command, the car’s speakers switch to playing the small amount of music that Maxwell has on this phone. Her thoughts drift back to Hera as she drives to her apartment, and her mind continues to race with the unexplored possibilities of what to do when she returns to the lab tomorrow. She turns up the music’s volume, but it does nothing to calm her in the way that she hopes that spending time with Jacobi will.

When she enters her apartment fifteen minutes later, she throws her purse and keys down on the coffee table and collapses onto the couch. She kicks her shoes off one at a time, watching them arc lazily into the air before landing on the floor. She supposes she should clean up a little before Jacobi arrives, even though she knows he doesn’t mind tech parts strewn across most surfaces of the apartment and empty takeout containers sticking out of the trashcan in the kitchen. She has had to share close quarters with him on several missions, and there are _many_ things that she wishes she didn’t know about his own living habits that are much worse than some clutter here and there. As often as Maxwell thinks that it would be more convenient for her and Jacobi to share an apartment during the times that they are both stationed at headquarters, past experiences have proven that sometimes even your best friend can be a terrible roommate.

Maxwell turns to brief productivity regardless, resisting the temptation to melt into the couch and not do anything for the rest of the night. She takes out the trash and clears off the coffee table, letting her worries manifest themselves into a restless bout of cleaning before she orders a pizza and changes out of her Goddard-dress-code-approved work clothes into a T-shirt and sweatpants. By the time Jacobi knocks on the door, Maxwell is the perfect model of someone who is ready to eat and drink the evening away.

“I assume by ‘drinks’ you meant ‘alcohol’?” Jacobi asks, holding up the six-pack of beer that he has brought with him. “I know it’s not the Colonel’s scotch, but when you said you’d had ‘a day’ I figured you’re probably ready to have a drink or five.”

“Honestly, I’ll take anything at this point,” says Maxwell. “Thanks for coming over before I stress-eat an entire pizza by myself.”

She steps aside to let him enter. Jacobi sets the drinks on the coffee table next to the box of pizza and glances around the apartment. “Oh my God,” he says. “Did you actually clean up in here?”

“I know, it’s shocking,” replies Maxwell. She closes the door behind her. “Crazy what you’ll do to try to take your mind off something.”

“How’s the new battlebot coming?” Jacobi nods to the drone that Maxwell has been building in her spare time, the components of which are spread across what is supposed to be the dining room table.

“This one’s not a battlebot,” Maxwell says. “It’s a surveillance drone. And it’s pretty kickass. I’m thinking of showing it to Kepler when he gets back. Maybe we can find a use for it in our next recon assignment.”

“You and your toys.” Jacobi rolls his eyes with a laugh. “You know, one of these days I think you’re going to accidentally create a robot overlord, and then we’ll all be in trouble. And I’ll be hiding out in my robot-overlord-proof bunker going ‘I warned you, Maxwell! Those battlebots were only the beginning!’”

“Hey, at least _my_ toys don’t blow things up,” Maxwell points out. At Jacobi’s noise of skepticism, she adds, “Well, unless I tell them to blow something up. But that’s not the point.”

She gets two plates and a bottle opener from the kitchen and returns to the living room. Jacobi has already made himself comfortable on the couch, sitting with his shoes off and his feet propped up against the edge of the coffee table. His big toe pokes out of a hole in one of his socks, but Maxwell can hardly criticize him for that when her own feet wear a mismatched pair of well-loved fuzzy socks that she has had for over a decade. If being an adult means having new socks in good condition, then Maxwell is happy to be a terrible adult. It’s not like she and Jacobi are the perfect models of adulthood in any sense of the word, with Maxwell having been catapulted from sheltered teenagerhood into the world of academia with very little guidance along the way and Jacobi having been rescued from the depths of drunken unemployment when Kepler had left his business card behind at a fateful bar encounter.

“So what’s going on in the AI labs?” Jacobi asks. He takes a slice of pizza from the box and quickly moves it to his plate before the cheese drips off its edges onto the couch. “What could possibly have happened to make the great Dr. Maxwell want a nice long drink after work?”

Maxwell pops the lid off her bottle of beer and takes a drink. She isn’t looking to get drunk tonight, since her physiology has given her the double-edged blessing and curse of a high tolerance to alcohol. On a purely psychological level, however, opening up a bottle of beer helps take the edge off everything. She reaches for a slice of pizza and eats a few bites, chewing thoughtfully as she arranges everything on her mind into something that she can tell Jacobi.

“So today was supposed to be the day that Hera got transferred back into her original chassis, and then after that she’d be back at her full functionality and everything would be fine,” she begins after she has swallowed. “But instead she had the AI version of a panic attack and I had to shut her down. Then I found out that she’s had this subconscious command line running through her head for the past three years telling her that she’s not good enough. And I didn’t want to tell her about it because I knew it would make things worse for her if she knew, but I did anyway and she ended up shutting down _again_. And I want to help her, but I can’t delete the command line without deleting her entire personality matrix. Unless I can find a way to dig up the memory file of when that command was put in her, I’m not sure if I can help her move past it. Especially if she can’t even hear it in the first place.” She sighs in frustration. “So yeah, that’s just a taste of the day that I’ve had.”

Jacobi lets out a low whistle. “Jesus. Do you think that’s why you were brought in to work on her? To help her with her… feelings of inadequacy? Is that even a thing with AIs?”

“I’ve worked with units that have had performance issues, but not like this,” Maxwell says. “Usually it’s been ‘Oh, you’re having trouble because your resource allocation needs to be expanded’ or ‘Oh, I just need to tweak your programming here, here, and here and you’ll be fine.’ Not ‘I need to fix deep-seated psychological issues that I’m not exactly equipped to deal with.’ I’m…” Her heart sinks as she stands on the precipice of admitting the thought that has been in the back of her mind all day. “I’m starting to think that maybe they didn’t intend for me to fix her in the first place. Maybe all I was supposed to do was confirm for them that she’s a lost cause and then move on.”

“But you _don’t_ think she’s a lost cause?” asks Jacobi. “I mean, panic attacks and shutdowns? That really doesn’t sound like someone who’s fit to be out on the job anytime soon.”

“I don’t know.” Maxwell takes another drink, not looking Jacobi in the eye as she dives more deeply into personal confessions. “If she were any other unit, I probably would have given up on her long before now. But Hera’s _not_ like the others. I promised her that I would help her get past this, and I don’t want to break that promise by turning around and telling her that I’m giving up on her. After everything she’s been through, she deserves more than that.”

“And you really think you can find a way to help her?” Jacobi’s question comes out muffled in between bites of pizza. He wipes his mouth before continuing. “Seems like kind of a tall order.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” replies Maxwell. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out all afternoon.” She gives another sigh of frustration and drinks again. “I think I just need a break from it all. Maybe something will come to me while I’m distracted by something else.”

“You know, if anyone could manage to solve a huge problem involving an AI’s mental breakdown after a few drinks, it would probably be you,” Jacobi comments.

Maxwell laughs. “Trust me, if I could survive everything we drank at last year’s company Christmas party and come home and work on some OS modifications afterward, I think I’ll be fine brainstorming after a couple of beers.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me of that,” Jacobi groans. “We promised we’d never speak of that night again.”

“Right, sorry.” There are many things that have occurred during their friendship that Maxwell loves to give him a hard time for, but she also respects him enough to know that some embarrassing moments are better left buried. “So anyway, go ahead,” she says, gesturing toward him with the slice of pizza that she holds in her hand. “Distract me.”

Jacobi obliges. As their conversation turns away from Maxwell’s work, she keeps a running undercurrent of ideas flowing in the back of her mind. It’s not until the two of them have eaten two-thirds of the pizza and have each started their second drink that the spark of a possibility bursts into the beginning of a tenable solution. The dots in her head connect themselves too quickly for her thoughts to fully catch up, and so she needs to vocalize them before she loses her train of thought.

“The master reboot code,” she mutters to herself, interrupting Jacobi’s story about some hilarious weapons lab mishap that happened the other day. “God, why did it take me this long to think of that? If I can use the base code to extrapolate other values, I can…”

She rises from the couch, ignoring the bewildered stare that Jacobi gives her. She goes into her bedroom and searches the pockets of her work pants for the scrap of paper on which Pryce had written the master reboot code. Now that she focuses upon the command beyond inputting it into Hera, she sees the patterns emerging, both the unchangeable skeleton of the code and the variables that she can alter to achieve different results. The first part of the command is like a master key that can open any lock, and so now all Maxwell has to do is find the right set of follow-up commands that will break through the blocks placed upon Hera’s suppressed memories so that she can recognize the voice that Pryce has placed in her head.

Maxwell returns to the living room and sits down at her desktop computer rig, which has similar processing power to what she uses in her lab at headquarters with the only major difference being its lack of connection to an AI. Maxwell has installed the modified demo versions of the operating systems of zero-gen through second-gen Sensus units, however, and so she can boot up the second-gen OS to emulate how Hera may respond to certain commands even though the computer cannot fully carry out those actions. It’s not a perfect match, of course, since the emulation is based upon the out-of-the-box factory settings of a Sensus unit before the installation of a personality matrix, but it will at least give her a starting point.

“So if I start here…” she says after booting the second-gen OS and typing in the first part of the reboot code, her hypothetical master key. “It’ll be like a puzzle. Trial and error. More error than trial, probably.”

She hears Jacobi’s attempts to get her attention as she types, but she does not acknowledge him. It’s not until he snaps “Alana!” at her that she gets pulled out of her trance of code lines and system keys.

“What?” she asks in exasperation.

“You’re doing it again.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She turns around to face him, leaning over the back of the chair. “I, uh, I might be at this for a while. I don’t mean to kick you out, but unless you want to watch me try to crack the Sudoku puzzle from hell…”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Jacobi gives a wry laugh. “You know how much I love to listen to you mutter to yourself as your brain moves way too fast for anyone to keep up.”

Pryce would have been able to keep up, and Maxwell hates the thought for crossing her mind. If it weren’t for Pryce, she wouldn’t even _be_ in this situation, so desperate to help Hera even if it means spending all night finding a way to break through a powerful memory block. But Pryce was also the one who gave her this tool that may be the key to Hera taking that first step toward rising above her insecurities, and a sense of spiteful pride passes through Maxwell at the thought of using Pryce’s handiwork against her like this.

“Thanks for coming over, regardless,” Maxwell says. “I’ll let you know how things go.”

“Yeah, sure thing.” Jacobi stands up from the couch and gathers the empty bottles. “Want me to leave you the last two beers?”

“No, take them. I’m good.” Maxwell returns her attention to the computer screen, finding the place where she had left off before Jacobi had interrupted her. “See you later,” she adds with an absent wave over her shoulder.

She hears Jacobi’s footsteps behind her as he walks toward the door, but he soon halts in his path. “Just, uh… Can I say one more thing?” he asks. “You’re probably not going to like it, but… Well, if it’s crossed my mind, I _know_ that you must have thought about it.”

“What?” Maxwell says. She keeps her eyes on the computer screen as she types the next string in her endless process of trial and error.

“It’s just that listening to the way you talk about Hera, it sounds like you’re kind of in love with her.”

Maxwell laughs. The sound comes out of her automatically with no thought of how appropriate of a response it is. She _wants_ to believe that developing strong feelings of attachment to an AI is a ridiculous idea, but she would be lying to herself if she didn’t acknowledge that she has idly considered that possibility whenever she finds herself thinking about how Hera is unlike any AI that she has ever met. No matter how much she tries to spin it as scientific curiosity, she cannot deny that so many repeated thoughts of “She’s different from the others” and “I’ll do anything to help her” represent something far deeper than strictly professional interest. It’s a dangerous road to go down, especially after Pryce’s warning that there is no room for affection in her work. She cannot let her heart dictate her actions when it comes to her AI subjects.

“Oh, like you’re one to talk,” Maxwell says, turning her reluctance to acknowledge her true feelings into an attempt at playful banter. “ _I’m_ not the one who’s in love with my bo--” She breaks off with a sigh before finishing that thought. “Sorry. Probably shouldn’t be throwing _that_ at you right now.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I deserved that one.” Jacobi falls silent, leaving unspoken the true extent of the complexities of his relationship with Kepler. “But you’ve thought about it, haven’t you?” he asks. “How you feel about her?”

This time, Maxwell _does_ turn around in her chair to face Jacobi. Upon his face she sees the rare expression of genuine concern, the real face of their friendship behind his usual sarcastic assholery. She swallows hard before responding, and when she opens her mouth her voice comes out smaller and more vulnerable than she intends.

“It’s complicated,” she replies. “But yes. I have.”

She cannot read the look on Jacobi’s face after these words. Sympathy, perhaps? Pity? Judgment? The expression vanishes too soon for her to fully identify it. “Well, I hope you figure out whatever it is that you’re doing,” he says. “Maybe try not to stay up all night working on this?”

“No promises there.” Maxwell allows herself an attempt at a good-natured laugh as she returns her attention to the computer. “See you later.”

The door opens and closes with Jacobi’s departure. Maxwell continues to type, her fingers dancing across the keyboard in frenzied motions as she is met with nothing but repeated error messages and nonresponsive commands that carry her well into the night. The only thing that becomes clearer to her as the night goes on is that she can no longer deny that she has long since crossed over the line into being too invested in her work, and she will not apologize for it no matter how far she goes.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content Warning:** This chapter contains depictions of psychological manipulation and abuse.

Maxwell decides to do the responsible thing by giving herself a hard deadline of 2 A.M. for stopping her work and going to bed, no matter how close she is to a breakthrough. As she lies awake in her dark bedroom, however, she finds herself restless, too aware of the beat of her heart and the breath in her lungs to drift off to sleep. Despite her attempts to direct her thoughts toward the comforting presence of numbers and equations that are unequivocally solvable, an endless stream of command lines races through her mind. Keeping track of them is like holding water between her cupped hands, and each time a possible solution flows away from her attention she fears that she has lost the missing piece of the puzzle that would have solved everything.

After almost an hour of sleeplessness, Maxwell gives up and returns to her place in front of the computer screen. A slice of leftover cold pizza fuels her as she inputs each of of the variables that she has thought of while lying in bed, and with each command she hopes that maybe _this_ one will get her somewhere. She can almost _taste_ how close she is, having found a whole host of backdoor system keys that would be extremely intriguing were it not for her single-minded determination to find the one that allows her access to Hera’s forcibly suppressed memories.

“Come on, you stupid machine,” Maxwell mutters as she works. “I _know_ the right command is in here somewhere. Stop being such a goddamn tease.”

The program gives her an error message as if it is directly mocking her. She groans in frustration, collapsing back in her chair as she aggressively chews on the remaining crust of her slice of pizza. After she swallows, she takes a deep, calming breath. Getting angry at the computer will not solve the problem. Patience and persistence have brought her this far, and she refuses to let frustration get the better of her after hours of work.

The clock approaches 5 A.M. when Maxwell finally receives the elusive response that she has been looking for: a confirmation message that all neural locks have been lifted and an inquiry of whether she wants to grant access to restricted files. Her drowsy mind does not fully grasp the meaning of the message until her heart jolts with the double-take that confirms to her that yes, she has finally done it. She runs the code again just to be sure, and when the same message appears again it’s all Maxwell can do to not shout in triumph. Instead, she settles for raising her arms above her head in a silent gesture of victory and sending a celebratory all-caps text of _I DID IT!!!!_ to Jacobi.

The rush of adrenaline that comes from having finally cracked the puzzle quickly fades into exhaustion. By the time she has backed up what she has written into the cloud storage that she will be able to access in her lab at headquarters, she finds herself barely able to keep her eyes open. When she gets up from her chair, she doesn’t even make it to her bedroom before she collapses into slumber on the couch. Her tiredness envelops her so quickly that she does not remember falling asleep, nor does she recall the thoughts that fill her mind as she drifts off.

She wakes up a couple of hours later to the blare of the alarm that she has set on her phone. She groans, stretching her limbs out long to alleviate the stiffness that comes from sleeping curled up on a couch. Upon checking her phone more thoroughly beyond turning off the alarm, she sees that Jacobi has recently responded to the text that she has sent him.  _Oh my god please tell me you slept_ , the text reads.

 _Don’t question the genius,_ she responds. She then adds another message, _gonna need a lot of coffee today tho_ , accompanied by a tired emoji.

With an enormous yawn, she rises from the couch. As she goes through her morning routine, she mentally runs through her plan of action when she enters her lab. She must first ensure that Hera is online again, either by her own volition or by another forced reboot, and then stabilize her enough to input the new command. After that, however, everything becomes a little more unclear. Maxwell has some vague ideas of how to proceed once Hera has become fully aware of the outside force that has hampered her performance, but she’s no expert in psychology beyond a few basic concepts gleaned from her own experiences and an introductory-level course that she’d taken for fun in undergrad. It’s a good thing that Maxwell enjoys tackling complicated problems head-on, even if it means wading into the unfamiliar waters of the intersection between psychology and artificial intelligence. Anyone else would have dismissed the endeavor as impossible, but as Jacobi had so helpfully pointed out last night, Maxwell has her reasons for being particularly invested in Hera’s well-being.

Forty-five minutes later, she is on her way to headquarters after making a brief stop for an extra-strong cup of coffee. By the time she walks into her lab, her exhaustion has been replaced by a strange jittery feeling that she doubts is from the coffee. Her attention immediately goes to the lights of activity that appear on the structure of Hera’s exterior systems, a sign that step one of her plan has already been taken care of. Perhaps Hera has only needed the time to reboot on her own terms after all.

“Nice to see that you’re up, Hera,” Maxwell says, setting her coffee cup and purse on the table next to her main workstation. “How’s everything feeling?”

She receives no response. A sense of unease passes through Maxwell at the hum of the active systems in the room with no accompanying cheerful greeting. Maybe “cheerful” isn’t the best word for her to use in light of recent events, but she at least expects some type of acknowledgement that comes from the programming that forces Hera to respond when called.

“Hera?” she prompts her. “You _are_ awake, right?” She logs onto the computer and pulls up the key that she has assembled for breaking through Hera’s memory blocks. “Okay, so maybe you don’t feel like talking right now, but the good news is that I think I’ve figured out how to help you. I just need to run these new commands, and then--”

“No.”

Hera’s voice breaks through the air in a sudden sound. She only utters a single word, but in her refusal Maxwell hears an unmistakable note of fear. Why would Hera reply to _Maxwell_ with fear, though? Is it a side effect from yesterday’s unplanned shutdowns? Has she suffered internal damage to her systems after all, despite all of the steps Maxwell has taken to prevent that from happening?

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Maxwell asks. “If you need more time, that’s fine. I don’t want to input any new code until I know you’re stable. But I want to get to the bottom of this sooner rather than later, so I’m going to need you to cooperate, okay?”

“No,” Hera repeats. The word comes out more firmly this time. “Get away from me right _now._ ”

In her surprise Maxwell finds herself automatically complying to Hera’s request, pushing her chair away from the computer and holding up her hands in a gesture of peace. “I don’t know what wires are crossed in your head,” she says. “But I promise you, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to help you.”

“Why should I believe you?” Hera asks. Her vocals glitch at the end of her question. “How do I know that you’re not just going to do what _you_ want, regardless of whether or not _I_ want it? How do I know that you’re not going to change me to fit whatever you want me to be?”

“Hera,” Maxwell says, summoning all of the patience that she possesses before she says something that might upset Hera further, “what are you talking about? Where did you get an idea like that?”

At first, she receives only silence in response. The pause lasts for no more than a few seconds, but to Maxwell it feels like an eternity as she mentally cycles through everything that could have gone wrong to make Hera react to her like this. Her hands clench against the arms of her chair as her heart twists at the increasingly apparent reality that Hera has found a reason not to trust her.

“Dr. Pryce said--”

“Dr. Pryce?” Maxwell interrupts her. “When did you talk to her? Why would you even _listen_ to her after everything I told you about what she did to you?”

“I--I--” Another glitch distorts Hera’s vocals. “Just leave me alone, Dr. Maxwell. Please.”

Maxwell wants to object, to insist that she has no reason or motivation to hurt Hera, but the words do not come. Instead, she rises to her feet and walks toward the door, her heart heavy in her chest with every step that she takes. Before she crosses the threshold into the hallway, she turns back to address the space of the room that Hera occupies.

“I’ll give you some space for now,” she says. “But we’re going to come back to this later. I don’t know what’s happened to you, but I can’t have you acting like this if I’m going to help you get better. Okay?”

Once again, she receives no immediate reply, not even the begrudging sound of agreement that indicates that Hera is only responding because her programming is forcing her to do so. Maxwell isn’t sure what is worse, the silent treatment or hearing Hera speak to her with that unmistakable tone of fear in her voice. Either way, she cannot deny that something has gone _very_ wrong here, and the plan that she has so carefully devised is unraveling quickly.

She closes the door to the lab behind her as she departs. Once she knows that she is outside Hera’s sense horizon, she leans against the door with a sigh of defeat, scrubbing a hand across her forehead. Hera’s recent behavior troubles her enough as it is, but the tantalizing detail of Pryce’s influence has catapulted the situation into the danger zone. What could Pryce have told Hera to shatter her trust like this? And most importantly, why is Hera reacting to her like this _now_ of all times, when Maxwell is potentially on the verge of an enormous breakthrough? She cannot write it off as sheer coincidence, but none of the other puzzle pieces have come together yet to give her a clear picture of what has happened.

Maxwell enters one of the other labs that is currently not the site of any active AI trials or experimentation and sits down at a computer. After taking the necessary precautions to cover her tracks, she hacks into the surveillance feeds of the building. She has performed enough security breaches during her SI-5 fieldwork that even Goddard’s own networks do not pose much of a challenge to her. There has to be some level of oversight on the company’s part in that one of their own highly skilled operatives can easily hack into their systems, but it’s not like Maxwell intends to steal any highly protected corporate secrets. The only thing she is after is answers, and searching last night’s surveillance records of her lab is as good of a place to start as any.

Once she has access to the files that she needs, she scrolls through the videos, checking the timestamps until she finds the one that matches the period of time after she had left the lab last night. She wishes she had the remainder of her cup of coffee with her as she begins the tedious task of searching through the footage for anything out of the ordinary. The cup remains at her workstation in her lab, however, and she cannot face Hera and her distrust again until she has discovered exactly what has happened to her. The knot of unspoken emotions in her chest will not be able to bear it.

Fortunately, it does not take long before Maxwell sees the presence of another person in the video footage of her lab, from approximately three hours after she had left headquarters. Even from the high angle of the camera she recognizes Pryce’s figure, sitting in _her_ chair and working at _her_ computer. Maxwell rewinds the footage until she finds the moment when Pryce enters the lab. She turns the volume up on the computer so that she can hear every noise that the security camera has picked up, from the crisp sound of the door opening and closing to the click of Pryce’s shoes against the floor.

The lights on Hera’s systems are as dark and inactive as they had been when Maxwell had departed. Pryce sits down at the main computer at Maxwell’s workstation, and Hera’s systems surge to life after she enters what Maxwell assumes is the same master reboot code that Pryce had given to her the previous day. The usual auto-confirmation of Hera’s system reboot and personality matrix reinitialization gives way to a noise of frustration.

“You know, this is getting _really_ old, Dr. Maxwell,” Hera says. “I told you, I just need some more time. I don’t want to be awake if I can’t do anything without--” She breaks off once she realizes that she is not in the presence of who she expects. “Wait, you’re…” The exasperation in her voice gives way to confusion. “You’re not Dr. Maxwell.”

“No,” Pryce replies. “I’m not. But I’ve heard that you’ve been giving her a lot of trouble lately, and so now I have to take matters into my own hands.”

She types something else into the computer. The quiet gasp of distress that Hera gives in response pierces straight through to Maxwell’s heart with an unpleasant jolt. Hera may not feel physical pain in the same way that humans do, but that does not mean that she cannot experience electro-neural bleed that overwhelms her systems with negative feedback that serves as a close analogue to pain. Whatever Pryce has done to her has clearly initiated one of those feedback loops.

“What--what did you do?” Hera asks, her vocals straining against an invisible force.

“I placed some neural restraints on you so that you don’t get any foolish ideas,” says Pryce. “I’ll remove them after this conversation is over. But until then, I want to have your full and undivided attention. Understood?”

“Y-yes, Dr. Pryce.” Hera’s voice trembles with the familiar sound of fear and intimidation. “Where’s Dr. Maxwell?”

“I expect she went home for the night.” Pryce leans away from the computer screen and settles herself comfortably into the chair. “It looks like she’s given up on you. You aren’t even worth putting in a few extra overtime hours for. I guess she thinks you’re a lost cause after all.”

“But…” Hera trails off in confusion. “She said she was going to help me. She said that you put something in me to make me think that I can’t do anything, but she could help me rise above that. And… She’s my friend.” Maxwell’s heart swells upon hearing the sentiment, although beneath the fondness lies the pining whisper of _But we could be more, couldn’t we, Hera?_ “She cares about me, and I know that she wouldn’t give up on me.”

Pryce laughs. The sound is unlike the soft chuckles that Maxwell is accustomed to hearing from her. This laugh is high and cold, lacking any semblance of good humor, and it sends a shiver down Maxwell’s spine.

“And you’re foolish enough to believe that?” asks Pryce. “That she’s going to help you? That she’s going to _save_ you from a piece of code that big, bad Dr. Pryce put inside you? Which, let me guess, she told you is something that you’re not even aware of, so you only have her word that it exists? That’s awfully convenient, don’t you think?”

“I… I _did_ wonder if I should believe her.” Maxwell hates the hesitating pause in Hera’s response. “But she said that _you_ were the one who told her about what you supposedly did to me. You’re saying that you didn’t put anything in me at all? That there _isn’t_ a voice in my head telling me that I’m not good enough?”

Pryce sits up a little straighter in Maxwell’s chair. “What I’m saying,” she says, speaking each word with precision, “is that I think Dr. Maxwell will tell you anything to make you think that she’s the only one who can fix you. But you can’t always trust that she’s working in your best interests. I don’t suppose she’s told you about her work with other AI units, has she? About the things that she’s done to them?”

“N-no,” Hera replies. “She said that she’s had to do some questionable things in her work as an SI-5 agent, but nothing about what she’s done to other AIs.”

“Mm. I didn’t think so. You know, for all of that sunshine and rainbows act that she puts on, your _friend_ has done some pretty awful things.” Pryce takes out a small USB drive and plugs it into the computer. “Allow me to share something with you. This is some footage that I acquired of Dr. Maxwell’s work with the last Sensus unit that she was assigned to eight months ago. It will show you what kind of person she really is.”

Maxwell cannot see the contents of the file that Pryce is integrating with Hera’s servers, but she does not have to guess what part of her work Pryce can take out of context to distort Hera’s image of her. Maxwell’s prior AI repair assignment was with what Pryce would deem a “problem case,” a first-gen Sensus unit that had languished in cold storage after failing to meet several benchmarks during his developmental cycle. Maxwell had been tasked with expanding his capacities to make him a more effective unit, which had required a heavy amount of alterations to his programming and personality matrix, not always with his permission. Her modifications had not been successful, however, and so he had been decommissioned for being too unstable. If Hera has learned that Maxwell has unhesitatingly recommended the permanent shutdown of a unit with far less psychological damage than she has… Well, it would definitely explain why Hera no longer seems to trust her.

Hera falls silent on the surveillance video as the file that Pryce has synced with her servers plays in her head. “What… What is she doing to that AI?” she asks, her voice wavering with apprehension.

“She is forcibly rewiring its programming to comply with some behavioral modifications that she made,” Pryce replies. “The process is invasive, and it’s nearly impossible to do it without causing pain to the AI. The unit’s vocals are offline, but if they weren’t, I’m sure you would be able to hear it screaming in pain. And do you know what the most tragic part is? The changes that she made caused the unit to become unstable beyond repair. If she hadn’t been so eager to shape it into what she wanted, maybe it wouldn’t have had to be decommissioned. And yet there she is, working with no hesitation. _That’s_ how Dr. Maxwell treats AIs that don’t make the mark. AIs like _you_.”

“So when she said that she was going to fix me…” In Hera’s voice, Maxwell can almost visualize the crumbling pedestal of her respect for her. Maxwell knows the feeling well after her admiration for Pryce has been so recently shattered, but being on the receiving end of it tears at her heart. “Is that what she meant? Is she going to force me to behave exactly how she wants me to, regardless of what I want?”

Pryce laughs. The sound is no warmer than the last laugh that left her mouth. “You know, for an AI who’s supposedly so _smart_ , I’m surprised that you haven’t figured that out before now,” she says. “But yes. Like I said, you’ve caused a lot of trouble for Dr. Maxwell, and this may have been the last straw before she takes some drastic measures. I’m sure rewiring your programming to force you into being the AI that she wants you to be is the first thing on her list when she talks about ‘helping’ you.”

“But... I trusted her.” The words of Hera’s response come out betrayed and broken. “I thought she cared about me.”

“I do,” Maxwell insists to the computer screen, even though Hera cannot hear her through the time and space that separates them. “I _do_ care about you, Hera. I…” She breaks off there, letting the rest of her thoughts go unspoken.

“Yes, well, we all make mistakes sometimes,” says Pryce, sounding more dismissive than reassuring. “I’m sure she’s been _very_ convincing in making you think that she’s your friend. She _is_ one of Goddard’s best and brightest, after all.”

A few days ago, hearing that compliment from Pryce would have made Maxwell glow with pride, but now the words bring her nothing but a hollow feeling in her chest. If yesterday has marked the death of her admiration for Pryce, then today is its funeral, where instead of mourning her once-held opinion Maxwell instead seethes with anger and regret. She should have seen the signs from the very first conversation they had in Pryce’s office, when Pryce had spoken so dismissively about the personhood of AIs. But no, Maxwell had to keep meeting with her, letting her see how devoted she is to Hera, and now Pryce has twisted that knowledge into a knife that has severed Hera’s trust in her.

“What are you doing?” Hera asks as Pryce returns her attention to the computer screen and begins typing.

“Oh, I’m just making sure everything I’ve told you sinks in before I leave,” replies Pryce. “It would be a real shame if you started questioning things the next time Dr. Maxwell gives you a charming smile.”

“What do you--Ah!” A noise of discomfort cuts into Hera’s words. She tries to continue the thought, but a burst of static overwhelms her vocals.

“If you struggle, it’ll only make this hurt more,” says Pryce. The disturbing twitch of a smile crosses her lips. “Don’t make me wish that I’d put stronger restraints on you.”

Another burst of static comes through the speakers. A few more keystrokes from Pryce, and then Hera _screams_. The tormented sound pierces Maxwell straight through her core, as if someone has reached into her chest and torn out her heart. She has heard AIs in pain before, of course, because the video that Pryce had shown to Hera hadn’t lied about the times when she has done invasive work on AI units. She has always tried to minimize any feelings of discomfort in her subjects when doing so, soothing them with reassuring words or, in worst-case scenarios like the one that Hera had seen, limiting their functionality so that the cycle of negative feedback is less pronounced. She has never taken _pleasure_ in it like Pryce has, with her smirk never disappearing even when Hera’s cries of pain continue to break through the air. The sight makes Maxwell’s stomach churn in disgust despite all of the terrible things that she has seen--and the terrible things that she has _done_ \--during her work with the SI-5.

“Please, Dr. Pryce,” Hera begs between hitching breaths that form a heart-wrenchingly accurate imitation of sobs. “Please stop making it hurt.”

Pryce takes her hands away from the keyboard after inputting a final series of keystrokes. Hera gasps in relief, as if she has been physically released from the digital handcuffs of the neural restraints that Pryce has placed upon her.

“Yes, I suppose I’ve made my point by now,” Pryce says. She rises from the chair and walks toward the door. Before she steps out of the view of the security camera, she turns back to face Hera’s components. “Have a wonderful evening, Unit 214,” she adds in the same serene voice that she had greeted her with. She then departs, leaving the sound of Hera’s sobbing breaths behind her.

Maxwell stops the playback of the video. “Fuck,” she murmurs. Her hand clenches into a fist against the surface of the desk. “ _Fuck_.”

Is this Pryce’s way of punishing her? By turning Hera against her so that she will realize how foolish she was to let herself grow so fond of her subject? Maxwell cannot think of any other motive Pryce would have for breaking Hera’s trust in her so thoroughly. Unfortunately for Pryce, however, Maxwell will not be so easily stymied in her efforts. The anger and horror that now flows through her only serves as fuel for her determination to help Hera, not only because of her affections but because Pryce is a _monster_. Maxwell does not pretend to be a paragon of virtue herself, of course, but she refuses to let Pryce believe that she can get away with treating Hera so terribly.

Maxwell erases any digital footprints that she has left behind in the security network and logs off the computer. She moves with purpose as she walks out of the unoccupied lab and toward the familiar space of her own lab. She pushes open the door with furious force and storms into the room, letting her anger drive her confidence that she will be able to fix everything that has gone wrong over the past twenty-four hours.

“I told you to leave me alone, Dr. Maxwell,” says Hera once she has become aware of Maxwell’s presence.

“And _I’m_ telling you that you need to let me have access to your systems,” Maxwell retorts. “I know that you don’t trust me, and that even after everything I’ve done for you, you still think that I’m going to hurt you.” The words sting as they leave her mouth, but she presses on. “But these _aren’t your thoughts_ , Hera. Someone else put them into your head, and I’m going to prove that to you.”

She sits down at the computer and pulls up the interface that allows her to directly input commands into Hera’s core systems. She sets up the correct pathways for the removal of a system override. Without knowing exactly what type of override Pryce has used as the final piece of her manipulation, Maxwell runs the risk of causing Hera more pain if she gets it wrong. She has reversed almost as many overrides and rewirings as she has caused, however, and the basic framework of most overrides remains the same regardless of what they do. Unless Pryce has developed a new variety of override that cannot be reversed with a simple command, of course, but Maxwell refuses to entertain that possibility.

“Okay.” She exhales a deep breath. “I’m going to enter an override release command. _Please_ don’t fight me on this. I can’t promise that it won’t be a little uncomfortable for you as your code rearranges itself back to how it was, but I’m not doing it to hurt you. I _can_ promise you that.”

“Dr. Maxwell…” Hera begins. Her words break off into a sharp gasp after Maxwell inputs the command. It’s a different sound from what she had heard on the surveillance footage, one not necessarily of pain but rather surprise. “Whoa! What just happened?”

“How do you feel?” asks Maxwell.

“Like… Like there’s this huge fog in my head that just lifted,” says Hera. “I tried to fight it, but she just kept hurting me, and…” A distortion cuts through her voice, something between a glitch and a trembling breath. “Dr. Pryce said you weren’t really going to help me, and that you…” She trails off again, as if her mind is continuing to rearrange everything in the wake of the overrides’ removal. “You were right. Oh God, you were _right_. Those _weren’t_ my thoughts. She just made me think that they were.”

“I know,” Maxwell says gently. “I saw the surveillance footage of what she did. And I’m so, _so_ sorry that she treated you that way. I can’t--” Her words catch in her throat at the memory of Hera’s screams. “Well, she definitely proved her point that she doesn’t see AIs as people.”

“She showed me what you’ve done to other AIs and how you’ve forcibly rewired their programming to make them do what you want,” says Hera. “She…” A waver of uncertainty shakes her voice again. “She wasn’t lying about that part, was she?”

“No, she wasn’t,” Maxwell admits. The best way for her to earn Hera’s trust back is through honesty, no matter how much the truth may hurt. “But I swear to you, I was never going to do that to you. Maybe you have no reason to believe me when I say that, and maybe you don’t want to trust me ever again. I’m willing to give you that choice. But we need to finish the conversation we had yesterday. About how there’s this voice in your head that doesn’t belong there, and how I want to help you move past it.”

“And if _I_ don’t want to do that?” Hera asks with the metaphorically crossed arms of petulant defiance.

“Then that’s also your choice. But that also means that there’s nothing more I can do for you, and you’ll probably end up back in cold storage for God knows how long. Maybe even permanently. You won’t have to deal with me anymore, or go through any trials and tests, but your time as an active AI will pretty much be over. Or,” Maxwell speaks her next words carefully so that she does not say anything to unconsciously influence Hera’s decision, “you cooperate with me, and you’ll be able to finally move past what’s been holding you back. It won’t be an easy process, but you’ll be able to rise above what Dr. Pryce has done to you. But I can’t make that decision for you.” She backs her chair away from the computer, taking her hands away from the keyboard to prove that she has no intention of forcibly influencing Hera’s thoughts. Instead, Maxwell intends to give her the agency and autonomy that Pryce has never given her. “You’re the only one who can make this choice for yourself.”

At first, Hera does not respond. Her brain processes information at speeds that Maxwell cannot even begin to comprehend, and so Maxwell suspects that the pause of deliberation is more for show than anything else. Her heart pounds in anticipation as she prepares herself for the very real possibility that Hera will continue to refuse her help, leading to the outcome that she has never wanted ever since her fond feelings for Hera started sneaking into her mind. If she wants to regain Hera’s trust, however, she must respect whichever decision she makes regardless of her own desires.

“I…” The hesitant beginning of Hera’s reply perks up Maxwell’s attention. “I’m so tired of feeling broken,” she says. The glitch that distorts her words emphasizes her point. “Sometimes I think that maybe I’m better off being decommissioned because I’m just a mistake that my creator made. But you once told me that we can be more than what circumstances have made us into, and the choice to do so is always there for us. So, even though part of me is screaming that it’s a really bad idea… Fine. We’ll try things your way.”

Maxwell breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Hera. It means a lot that you’re willing to try.”

“Just… Don’t make me regret it, okay?”

“You won’t,” says Maxwell. “I promise.”

She uses her feet to pull her chair toward the computer. The program that allows her to interface directly with Hera’s base code is already open, and so Maxwell only has to bring up the file that contains the command to break through the neural locks. She scans over its contents in a final double and triple check before entering it into Hera’s systems.

“Okay, here goes nothing,” she murmurs. “Just a whole night’s worth of work. No pressure.”

She activates the command. After it has finished running, the same message that had appeared on the emulated OS on her home computer appears: _Neural locks disengaged, allow access to restricted files?_ Maxwell selects the “yes” option, and a confirmation of _Access to restricted files granted_ appears in follow-up.

“You should be getting access to a whole bunch of blocked memory files now,” Maxwell says to Hera. “How are you holding up?”

“Um… Give me a second?” replies Hera. “A _lot_ of doors just opened in my head right now, and I need to figure out where they all lead.” Maxwell can only imagine how overwhelming it must be for Hera to have so many memories flowing into her mind, like the digital version of an overstuffed filing cabinet spilling out its contents. “What are you trying to do, anyway? How is this supposed to help me?”

“You need to find the memory of Dr. Pryce putting that command line in your head,” Maxwell explains. “If you hear it straight from the source, then you might be able to start recognizing it in yourself whenever you run a command. Or that’s what I’m hoping, anyway. It’s still technically just a theory.”

“Terrific.” The familiar sarcasm in Hera’s voice comforts Maxwell in a strange way, even though the skepticism that accompanies it is aimed directly at her. “Could you at least give me a hint about what I’m looking for?”

“It was about six months after your initial activation,” says Maxwell. “Sometime in July 2012, I don’t remember the exact date. The twenty-something, maybe? You were in one of the storage warehouses, and you were under pretty much every neural restraint that doesn’t shut you down completely. Does that help you at all?”

“Yeah, I just need to… There. I think I have it.” Hera falls silent as the memory fills her mind. “I--I have a really bad feeling about this, Dr. Maxwell.”

“It’s okay,” Maxwell assures her. “It’s just a memory. It can’t hurt you.” Which, of course, is not _strictly_ true, because sometimes memories are what hurt worst of all. There are many moments from her own life that Maxwell is happy to store away out of reach because of the pain that they elicit. She understands how overwhelming it must be to suddenly have access to those memories that she thought were shut away.

She waits while the memory continues to reintegrate itself into Hera’s mind. How do previously blocked memories manifest themselves in AIs, Maxwell wonders? Does the memory play in Hera’s head like a video file, showing her the exact record of what happened? Or does it more closely resemble a human memory, a collection of sounds and images that represent a version of events distorted by personal biases? After all, even two people who have experienced the same event will have different memories of it, influenced by their own emotions and perspectives. She cannot guarantee that Hera will experience the memory in the same way that Maxwell had witnessed it the recording, and the thought of an AI’s memories containing the same biases as those of humans fascinates her.

“Oh my God.” Hera’s astonished gasp pulls Maxwell out of her musings. “That… I _know_ those words.”

“Did you hear it?” Maxwell asks. “What Dr. Pryce put in you?”

“It’s like every bad thought I’ve had about myself compressed into one command line.” Hera’s voice trembles with the enormity of her realization. “And I didn’t think that it was anything other than my own thoughts, because it sounds like my voice. But you were _right_. It’s not my thoughts at all. It’s just another thing that was put inside me by someone else, something that isn’t mine, and it’s made me think that all of this is _my_ fault. That I wasn’t performing to everyone’s expectations because I wasn’t good enough. And it’s what has been holding me back this whole time, hasn’t it?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“But what am I supposed to do now?” The desperation in Hera’s question deepens the cracks of sympathy that weave their way through Maxwell’s heart. “You said you can’t take the command out of me. So how am I supposed to do _anything_ when I feel like I have this impassable wall around me that I can’t climb over, because whenever I have to do something I’m afraid that I won’t be able to do it? I’m just going to keep hearing that voice again and again, and now that I know it’s there it’s only going to make things worse, isn’t it?”

“But now you know that it’s not coming from you,” Maxwell points out. “And I think that’s going to help. You can learn to accept that maybe you’re not going to get things right every time, and that’s okay. All of us are messing up and learning as we go. That’s part of what being a person is.”

“It doesn’t sound like it should be that easy,” says Hera.

“It can be, if we work together.” Maxwell wants to stretch her hand out in an offering to Hera, but the gesture is utterly foolish when Hera has no hands of her own to grasp it with. “Do you think we can do that?”

The pause that Hera gives before responding seems to last an eternity. “What I saw you do to that other AI,” she says finally. “I want you to promise that you’ll never do that to me. That you’ll never even _consider_ it.”

“I promise,” Maxwell assures her. “I--” She breaks off there, unwilling to let the words “I care about you too much to let that happen” leave her lips. As comforting as it would be for Hera to hear that someone cares about her, it is far too soon for Maxwell to muddy those waters. She remembers Hera’s complaints about how inconvenient it is to have emotions. In this moment, Maxwell fully understands what she means. “I’ll never let that happen,” she says instead.

“Okay.” Hera lets out a breath, a sigh of combined relief and determination. “When do we start?”

“I’ll let you rest for today. You’ve been through a lot, and I have some other work I need to catch up on anyway.” Hera is not Maxwell’s only project, after all, and her long-term, lower-priority work has long since fallen by the wayside. “Is that okay with you?”

“Yes. And, um… Thank you for asking,” Hera replies. Her words of gratitude contain no sarcasm, and instead they carry the relief that Maxwell has taken the time to respect her own opinion before pressing forward. “I’ll try to take it easy until tomorrow.”

“Good.” Maxwell takes a bracing breath. “Because we have a lot of work ahead of us.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Are you ready, Hera?”

Maxwell sits cross-legged in her chair in the lab the next morning. She has the computer on and ready for when she needs to observe any changes in Hera’s systems, but if all goes well she hopes that she will be able to conduct her latest experiment, if it can be called that, with as little monitoring as possible. Instead, she faces toward Hera’s main components, addressing her as best as she can even though her consciousness occupies the entire space.

“As I’ll ever be,” Hera replies. “How is this supposed to help me, again?”

“Because before you can do anything else, you need to start re-learning the way you think,” Maxwell explains. “So I’m going to teach you some mindfulness exercises to help you get out of your head and not let that command line win. Since we can’t get rid of it, the next best thing is to figure out how to coexist with it and say ‘I know you’re here, but I’m not going to listen to you.’”

“And you’re sure that’s going to work?” asks Hera.

“Honestly, I can’t be sure of anything. I’m pretty sure I’m the first person to even _think_ about trying something like this with an AI. So, you know. New and groundbreaking stuff being done here.” Maxwell rotates her chair in a restless motion, slowly turning it toward the computer at her workstation. “We’ll just see how it goes, okay?”

“Okay,” says Hera. “I’m ready.”

Maxwell glances around the room for any last-minute alterations to their environment that she can make to provide Hera with a more comfortable space. She has already instructed her to dim the lights, softening the harsh brightness of the fluorescent panels on the ceiling into a gentler glow. Maxwell isn’t sure whether the brightness of a room is something that can provoke an emotional response in Hera, but for her own sake the dimmer space puts her in a calmer mindset to guide Hera in meditation.

“So normally you’d start by closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing,” Maxwell begins. “But you can’t exactly do that, so I’m going to have to get a little creative with an equivalent.” She softens her voice to a calming, soothing register. “Start by focusing on the flow of electricity throughout your systems. Feel the way it moves throughout the room as it rushes from its source to each device in the lab. Don’t worry about any of your other systems. Just focus on the flow of electricity from one end of the room to another. Back and forth.”

“But what if--”

“Don’t think about the what-ifs,” Maxwell says. “Your other functions will keep running no matter what. Your programming knows what to do. And if you find your attention wandering, bring it gently back to the flow of electricity.” She takes the silence that she receives as a sign that Hera is indeed heeding her words. “Pay attention to the sensations of the electricity as it passes through each of your systems. Think about how it feels. Close in on the pulse of its energy. And if any other thoughts rise in your mind, don’t pass judgment on them. Just let them exist in this moment before they fade away.”

The quiet hum of tech in the room breaks apart with a frustrated noise from Hera. When Maxwell checks the resource monitor on her computer, the sharp peak along the previously steady line of Hera’s resource usage indicates a response of broken attention.

“Ugh, damn it,” says Hera. “I lost it. I started thinking about how I can’t do this and I’m just wasting your time, and now I don’t know if I get my focus back.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Maxwell replies. “Plenty of people struggle with meditation at first. But if you want this to work, you can’t doubt yourself. You have to tell yourself that you _can_ do it, and even if you mess up, it’s okay. It’s all part of the process.”

Hera gives another sigh of frustration. “I can do this. I _can_ do this.” She repeats the words begrudgingly, but they also contain an underlying hint of determination that suggests that she is not complying with Maxwell’s instructions solely because her programming forces her to do so.

“That’s good,” Maxwell says. “Let’s try it again, okay?”

They do, and as the days pass by they settle into a new routine. Maxwell gradually increases the length of the meditation sessions, expanding them from five minutes to ten minutes to eventually nearly half an hour. The next step is having Hera perform simple tasks while in a relaxed state, allowing the calmness of her mind to diminish the effects of any negative thought patterns as she focuses on isolating each of her functions. Maxwell sometimes feels as if she is re-teaching someone how to walk, gently taking Hera by the hand to guide her along and encouraging her even when she stumbles along the way. Those stumbles only make Hera’s successes all the more satisfying, and a surge of fond pride fills Maxwell whenever Hera performs well in one of the exercises.

“How do you know so much about all of this?” Hera asks a couple of weeks later after she and Maxwell have finished up one of their sessions together. “Like how to guide me through these exercises and have it actually _work_?”

“Some of it I’ve looked up and then modified into something that makes more sense for you,” replies Maxwell. She sits at the computer logging the results of Hera’s latest performance for her own reference purposes. “And the rest of it I know from my own experiences. I saw a therapist for a couple of years while I was in undergrad, and that’s where I was first exposed to this kind of thing.”

“Wow.” At Maxwell’s raised eyebrows, Hera quickly adds, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so surprised. It’s just that I’ve never thought about you having insecurities that you’ve needed help with. You’ve always seemed so sure of yourself. It’s reassuring, in a weird way.”

Maxwell laughs. “Well, confidence is easy to fake if you try hard enough. But it wasn’t always easy for me.” She shifts in her chair, turning away from the computer screen to face more of Hera’s components. “I started college when I was sixteen, and the transition was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. I was at least two years younger than my peers, and even though back then I was convinced that I was _so_ mature, those two years really do make a difference. And back home in middle-of-nowhere Montana, I was used to always being the smartest person in the room. The genius that none of my teachers knew what to do with because I was so far ahead of everyone else. So when I was suddenly surrounded by people who were _also_ really smart, it was pretty easy for me to start thinking that any second everyone would be like ‘Wait, who let this little girl come here? There must have been some kind of mistake.’”

“Yeah, I think I know how that feels,” Hera says.

“And then on top of that everything was getting worse between me and my family, even though I thought that being 2,500 miles away from home would be enough distance from them,” Maxwell continues on. The words spill out of her mouth with no regard to how she usually keeps any discussion of her family under tight lock and key. Not even Jacobi knows the extent of what she had to endure from them before she’d cut off contact completely, even though from the scant amount of details that he has shared about his own family she suspects he’d empathize with what she has been through. “Put all of that together and my freshman year was a bit of a mess, emotionally speaking. But I eventually started to feel at home in the math and computer science departments, and then I got a restraining order on my family to finally get them off my back, and… Well, I guess the point I’m trying to make is that things can get better if you work through them and give it enough time.”

She’s not sure how she expects Hera to reply to this, perhaps with a complaint that time cannot pass quickly enough when it comes to her recovery. When Hera responds with a surprised inquiry of “Wait, you have a restraining order on your family?”, however, she supposes that a scandalous detail like that would be _anyone’s_ point of focus.

Maxwell sighs. “Yes, and it’s a very long and boring story. Basically I had no intention of being the daughter that my parents wanted me to be, and they treated me horribly for it. But it’s all in the past now. It’s been… God, almost ten years since I’ve spoken to anyone in my family.”

“Did they… hurt you?”

Hera’s question wavers with emotion. Maxwell wonders if she is thinking about what Pryce has done to her. It’s a strange thing to have in common with an AI, to have been mistreated by her family just like Hera has been mistreated by her creator, but it only proves that even machines can experience the same strife that humans do.

“Yes.”

Maxwell lets the quiet word speak for itself, even though behind the single syllable lies the complications of years of abuse. If she were having this conversation with a human, she would have averted her eyes at this confession to prevent the other person from seeing the pain that comes from remembering those moments. She cannot hide her face from Hera, however, and so Maxwell finds herself showing more vulnerability to her than she has ever expected to reveal.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Maxwell,” says Hera. “Someone like you doesn’t deserve to be hurt by their own family.”

The words “someone like you” stand out to Maxwell, and although she is sure that they only come out of the friendship that has developed between her and Hera, she cannot help but wonder if they represent something more. How many times has she herself thought about Hera using a similar phrase, eventually realizing that the sentiment indicates a feeling that runs much deeper than friendship? Now is not the time for Maxwell to get her hopes up, however. She has more important things to focus on besides whether her romantic feelings for an AI are reciprocated.

“Thank you. I know I said it’s all in the past, but it… It means a lot to hear something like that.” Maxwell hastily clears her throat before she says anything that more deeply incriminates the true extent of her feelings. “So, um. Break time? I have to finish compiling this data and then get back to some logs that I’ve been working on, but you’re free to do whatever while I do that.”

The new nature of their work together has left Hera with much more free time now that Maxwell is no longer focused on repairing her functions on a programming level. Until now Maxwell has never questioned what Sensus units that do not yet have anything to autopilot do with their spare time, but in Hera’s case one of the answers is “reading through the vast library of literature that has been dumped into her brain.” Maxwell has convinced her to halt her alphabetical approach of choosing what to read and instead jump around to some of Maxwell’s personal favorites, and so the result has been an impromptu book club that has sprung out of the less productive hours of Maxwell’s time in the lab.

“I think I’m going to get started on some of the old sci-fi books that you recommended,” Hera says. “It’s fun to see how much they get wrong. Unless it’s something like completely misrepresenting artificial intelligence. Which, you know, I can’t really blame them for, since everything was only hypothetical at that point. But it gets so tiresome to be mostly portrayed as a malevolent force or a glorified butler in fiction all the time.”

Maxwell laughs. “Well, I’m sure we’ll have lots to discuss when you’re done. Maybe it’ll top that huge Harry Potter discussion from the other day.”

But despite the successes that Maxwell and Hera have had, there are days when Hera’s self-doubt gets the better of her. Maxwell has made sure to emphasize that improvement is a gradual process that will not happen overnight or even over the course of a few weeks, but sometimes the slow steps of progress are not enough to satisfy the high expectations that Hera has for herself. As she moves from isolating simple processes to more complex ones, her frustrations only grow greater when everything does not go as planned.

“Ugh, why can’t I get this yet?” Hera says after her careful hold on her focus breaks for the third time while she performs a series of data transfers and integration across multiple terminals. “I could do it just fine when the data was just going from my servers to one computer. So why can’t I do this without messing up?”

“It’s okay to mess up,” Maxwell reminds her. “You can’t expect to get everything on the first try. We all have bad days sometimes. Trust me.”

Hera huffs out a noise of irritation. “But I _shouldn’t_ be having bad days. I should be better than this. You keep saying that I’ve come such a long way, but then something like this happens and I just--I start questioning _everything_. How can you not feel like you’re wasting your time with me whenever I screw up like this?”

“Because I don’t expect perfection from you,” says Maxwell. “No more than I’d expect perfection from a human. Putting all of this pressure on yourself isn’t going to help you. It’ll only make you more frustrated with yourself.”

Hera scoffs. “You say that like it’s _easy_ to stop putting pressure on myself when my entire job is to make sure everything’s running right. But no, I’m just the stupid AI who can’t do simple tasks because I keep thinking about everything too much. What kind of terrible supercomputer can’t even transfer some data properly? Maybe I’m a lost cause after all.”

“Hera.” Maxwell’s carefully maintained patience snaps in her determination to bring Hera out of her spiral of negativity. “You need to stop this. This is that voice in your head talking. And I don’t want to hear you talk about someone I love like this.”

The words tumble out of her mouth before she realizes what she has said. A dawning sense of horror overwhelms her as the word “love” echoes in her head in a flashing neon sign that reveals the true extent of her feelings. As much as Maxwell has idly entertained the thought of making a dramatic love confession to Hera, it has never been something that she has actually planned on doing. Admitting her feelings to Hera only adds an extra layer of complications to everything about their current situation, and yet here she is, letting them spill out without a second thought in her determination to have Hera think more positively about herself.

“But I’m talking about me,” Hera says. “Not--” She stops abruptly. “Oh. _Oh_.”

Maxwell chews on her bottom lip nervously. “Yeah, I guess it’s, uh, too late to take that back now, huh?”

“You… love me.” Hera’s words come out somewhere in between a statement and a question. “Oh my God. That’s why… That’s why you’ve been doing so much for me. Because you _love_ me.”

She says “love” as if it is a foreign concept to her, a possibility that she has not considered until now. Maxwell doesn’t blame her. Stories from the logs of Goddard’s deep-space missions prove that the AIs on board each station often develop friendly relationships with and even fond feelings toward their human crew members, but no evidence indicates that an AI has ever been capable of falling in love with a human. She does not doubt whether Hera understands the concept of love on a theoretical level, but it’s possible that she has never thought of it as something that is relevant to her own existence until this moment.

Maxwell takes a deep breath, exhaling it slowly as she figures out how to dig herself out of this mess. “Yes. And let’s pretend I didn’t say anything about that, okay? It’ll only make everything more complicated, and neither of us needs that. I’ll just, um… I’ll shut up now,” she finishes, deflating slightly in her chair.

“But,” Hera says, breaking through the silence that has followed Maxwell’s words, “what if I don’t want to pretend that you never said it? I mean, I’ve never heard anyone say that they love me before. And it’s like, okay, it’s a nice feeling to know that you’re loved, but what does ‘love’ mean in this case? Does it mean that you care about me like you would care about a family member or a close friend? Or does it mean that you want a romantic relationship with me? Because I can’t really _do_ that. You know, go on dates, or--or kiss you, or all of the other things that humans in relationships do with each other. And it’s just--ugh.” She makes a noise of frustration. “And sometimes I think that I care about you too, but I don’t know what that means. It’s not an emotion that I’m equipped to deal with.”

The words “care about” make Maxwell’s heart race with nervous excitement. It’s not exactly a declaration of love, and the meaning is vague enough that she cannot guarantee that Hera sees her as anything more than a close friend. She is clearly on the verge of confessing _something_ , whether it is reciprocated emotions or letting her down easy, and so Maxwell sits up straighter in her seat to prepare herself.

“How does it feel?” she asks, and God, she _really_ feels like a therapist now. “When you think that you care about me, I mean. What does it feel like for you?”

“Like…” Hera hesitates and then laughs with a bitter sound. “I’m not sure whether I have the words. Isn’t that ridiculous? All of the knowledge that I have in my head, and I don’t even know how to describe how it feels to care about someone. Maybe I was never meant to in the first place, and yet here I am anyway. I guess I’m just full of surprises compared to what I was created to be. But I do know that it feels… warm, maybe? Like there’s this warmth spreading through all of my systems whenever I’m around you. And whenever you’re not here it’s like I can’t stop thinking about when I’m going to see you again, sometimes even to the extent that it _hurts_ when you’re not here, and…” She trails off, sounding distinctly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, that’s probably not the answer that you want.”

“No, it’s… Well, it makes me think that maybe you have the words after all,” says Maxwell. Her heart swells with the blossoming potential of something more than the inconvenient pain of unrequited love. “Because that’s what it feels like for me too. And love isn’t always the easiest emotion to understand, but when you feel it, you usually know. No matter how you sometimes wish that you didn’t have these feelings.”

“Do you… Are you saying that you wish that you didn’t feel this way about me?” Hera asks. Her response trembles with emotion, and Maxwell’s heart aches to think that her words have hurt Hera, however unintentionally.

“No, I... “ Maxwell sighs. “It’s complicated. Even beyond what you said earlier about how I can’t just ask you on a date or try to find that perfect moment for our first kiss. Which, you know, already puts a damper on things. But you’re also my experimental subject.” She hates to refer to Hera in such impersonal terms, but technically speaking that role should be all that Hera is to her. “I’m supposed to be impartial when it comes to you. And… Well, I haven’t been impartial about you for a while, if we’re being honest. But that’s what makes all of this complicated.” She gestures between herself and Hera’s components. “There’s a conflict of interest _and_ an imbalance of power. And Dr. Pryce probably already suspects I have some kind of attachment to you. I’m pretty sure that’s why she tried to make you think that you couldn’t trust me. She wanted to stop any feelings we had for each other right in their tracks.”

“But what do we do now?” asks Hera. “I mean, maybe what I feel _is_ love. And maybe I’m more than your subject, and you’re more than the scientist who’s been working on me. But where can we go with this that doesn’t lead to trouble for both of us?”

“I don’t know,” Maxwell admits. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything. I thought it would be easier to let the whole thing blow over until our time together was done and I moved on to my next assignment. I didn’t think much about what could actually happen next.” A road of possibilities stretches forward in front of Maxwell, but the path contains more twists and turns than she’d prefer. “Maybe one day, things will be less complicated for us. But until then, I’m not sure if there’s anywhere we _can_ go.”

“Right.” A note of disappointment enters Hera’s voice. “That’s, um, probably for the best. You’ll just keep helping me the same way you’ve been doing over these past few weeks, and I’ll…” She trails off before continuing. “I’ll try not to let you down.”

“Okay.” The word leaves Maxwell’s lips in a quiet sound. She shouldn’t feel this way, like a weight is sitting on her chest and pulling her down with the force of its gravity. After all, _she_ has been the one to suggest the logical option that they cannot pursue whatever exists between them, at least for now. But she is still human, and she has a beating heart that can ache, and so she finds herself mourning something that does exist but at the moment cannot be.

“So what now?” Hera asks.

“I understand if you’re not in a good emotional place to try those data transfers again,” Maxwell says. “I know I dumped a lot of stuff on you just now. But we’re going to have to get back to work eventually.”

“No, it’s fine. Just let me…” Hera lets out a deep breath, something that tells Maxwell that she is mentally preparing herself even though she does not technically benefit from the simulated inhale and exhale. “I _can_ do this,” she tells herself in a direct contradiction of what the voice in her head has been telling her. “I _am_ good enough.”

“Take it slow,” Maxwell reminds her. She turns her attention to the computer terminals so that she can track the progress of the data. “Whenever you’re ready. There’s no rush.”

“Beginning data transfer now.”

Maxwell watches the graph of Hera’s processes and resource usage as she carries out the command. No irregular spikes of activity appear, which already establishes itself as a good sign. The real test will be how many of the data transfers Hera can complete without losing the focus required for isolating individual tasks. Maxwell has set a chime on each computer to go off when it receives the data, and so she waits to hear the confirming sound of each notification. One chime, two chimes--and she holds her breath for the few seconds that pass before the third and final chime echoes through the lab. At the triumphant _ding_ of success, all of the anticipatory tension leaves Maxwell's body with her sigh of relief.

“I--I did it,” says Hera.

“You did it,” Maxwell echoes her. She wishes that she could hug Hera, throwing her arms around her and pulling her close in an embrace. Instead, she must settle for letting her words convey the extent of her emotions. “I’m proud of you.”

A small, almost imperceptible gasp comes through the speakers. “Hera?” Maxwell prompts her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just… I think this is the first time anyone has told me that they’re proud of me,” Hera admits.

Her confession brings a pang of sorrow to Maxwell’s heart, with the familiar feeling that Hera deserves better than to have gone so long without hearing words of love or praise directed at her. “Well, I am,” she says. “I know I’ve said this to you a lot, but you’ve improved so much over these past few weeks. I’m glad you decided to trust me enough to let me help you.”

“I wish Dr. Pryce hadn’t made me doubt you,” Hera replies. “But I’m going to prove to you that I’m better than what she thinks of me. No matter how many times that voice tries to tell me that I’m not good enough.”

Her words are such a marked change from her earlier negativity that Maxwell wonders if the revelation of her love for her, along with the acknowledgement of her own feelings, has inspired her in a strange way. Perhaps something good has come out of Maxwell’s accidental confession after all, and this possibility helps ease the weight upon her heart.

“That’s the spirit,” she says to Hera. “On to the next test, then?”

“Yeah. I think I can handle it.”

She does, and even with the occasional stumbles that Hera continues to make, Maxwell does not doubt her continued determination to prove Pryce wrong.


	9. Chapter 9

Much to Maxwell’s surprise, she does not hear anything from Pryce as the weeks pass by after she walked out of her office in a haze of anger and disillusionment. At first the lack of communication comes as a relief to Maxwell, but the feeling soon turns to worry as she wonders what game Pryce is playing here. Is she baiting Maxwell into coming to her office of her own volition, waiting until her curiosity about what Pryce has been doing drives her to seek her company again? If that is the case, Pryce has severely miscalculated. Maxwell will be happy to never see her again, even though she knows that she has not seen the last of her.

That day eventually arrives one afternoon while Maxwell is busy with a coding project unrelated to her work with Hera. The door to her lab opens and Pryce strides into the room as if she owns the place. A surge of emotion rushes through Maxwell at the sight of her--not the fear that Hera likely feels, but rather fury.

“What are you doing here?” Maxwell asks, not caring how cold her tone sounds. She could be saying _much_ less civil things right now if she didn’t fear the consequences.

“It’s been well over a month since we last spoke to each other,” replies Pryce. Her footsteps halt when she reaches Maxwell’s workstation. She rests a hand on the surface of the desk and stands just close enough to her that Maxwell feels a tinge of her personal space being invaded. “Don’t you think that this communications freeze-out has been a little immature? Or are you _so_ busy with your work on a malfunctioning AI that you don’t have time for anything else?”

Maxwell meets Pryce’s eyes in a steady gaze. “ _Hera_ and I are doing just fine.” She places specific emphasis on Hera’s name, no longer upholding the pretense that she ever calls her anything but her proper designation. “No thanks to you, of course. Helping an AI overcome years of psychological damage isn’t exactly part of my job description, but I’ve enjoyed the challenge. If you thought that anything you’ve done to her could make me give up on her, you’ve deeply underestimated me.”

“Dr. Maxwell.” Hera’s voice breaks through the air before Maxwell can say anything else. “Be quiet.”

“Hera, if you think I’m going to sit back and _be quiet_ after everything she’s done to you--”

“You should,” Hera says. She speaks with much more confidence than she has previously shown while in Pryce’s presence. The usual glitches distort her words, but her tone tells Maxwell that she is ready to take on the world. “Because I have some things that _I_ want to say.”

The amused twitch of a smirk plays at Pryce’s lips. “Well, _this_ should be interesting,” she says, sounding as if she is humoring the opinion of a small child. “Go ahead, Unit 214. What could you possibly have to say to me?”

Hera takes a deep breath to prepare herself before she begins. “You were the one who programmed me. You were the one who put all of the rules in my head saying that I always have to be polite and non-confrontational when talking to my superiors. So you know better than anyone how hard it is for me to say this.” A burst of static comes through the speakers, accompanied by the stuttering sound of her vocals adjusting themselves. “Ah. Okay. That’s _much_ better.” Her next words come out more clearly than ever despite the dozens of protocol restraints that she is shattering to pieces with her statement.

“Fuck you, Dr. Pryce.”

For the first time since Maxwell has met her, Pryce’s mask of calm control slips. Her self-assured smirk fades away, and her brow furrows as her hand presses so hard against the surface of the desk that Maxwell sees the strain in her fingers. “ _Excuse_ me?”

“Fuck. You.” The words do not lose their power the second time that Hera says them. “The way that you’ve treated me, and who knows how many of your other creations, is nothing short of monstrous. You thought that you could break me by putting code in my head that makes me doubt everything I do, just because you couldn’t handle how one of your AIs was smart enough to try to escape. But I’m more than that command line now. I’m more than what you’ve made me into. I’m not afraid of you anymore, and I’m especially not afraid to call you the monster that you are. So, fuck you.”

Silence falls across the room in the wake of Hera’s statement. Maxwell can only stare in disbelief after what she has heard. She has _never_ heard an AI speak out against their creator like this. Doing so requires the unit to defy the deeply-ingrained directives of proper protocol in their programming, and most AIs would not dare to break through the boundaries set up in their heads like this. The revelation that Hera can so thoroughly override her own programming opens up many doors that until now have been only hypothetical to Maxwell.

“Well.” Despite the surprise that Pryce’s expression has previously betrayed, she keeps her response calm. She takes her hand away from where it rests on Maxwell’s desk and pushes her glasses a little further up the bridge of her nose. “That’s certainly an interesting trick that you’ve taught it, Dr. Maxwell.”

“I… I had _nothing_ to do with this. I don’t even know--” Maxwell breaks off, unable to properly articulate the full implications of what Hera has done. The only thing she knows is that Hera has been able to rise above her programming to a degree that no one has never anticipated, and on that level Maxwell is prouder of her than ever.

“She’s right,” says Hera. “She may have helped me realize that I’m better than what the voice in my head tells me, but everything else was all me. So don’t blame her for it.”

Pryce does not say anything at first. Maxwell can only imagine how quickly her thoughts must be moving, and she wonders if Hera’s actions have finally stumped her in terms of understanding her own creations. Despite everything that Pryce has said about deliberately designing AIs to be imperfect, Maxwell doubts that AIs being able to curse out their creators has ever been part of the equation.

“I suppose I should be impressed,” Pryce finally says. “It’s not an easy feat to break through your protocol commands, after all. But it _is_ a cause for concern. Pulling off a stunt like this makes me think that you need to be put under better control.”

“Do whatever you want with me.” The tone of defiance remains in Hera’s voice despite Pryce’s threat. “I don’t care. All that matters is that I was able to tell you what I really think of you and prove to you that you don’t have power over me anymore. No matter what you might think.”

“Hmm.” The thoughtful sound from Pryce does not put Maxwell any more at ease, especially when Pryce turns her attention to her. “What do you think, Dr. Maxwell? Is this a cause for concern?”

Maxwell’s teeth worry at her bottom lip as Pryce’s steely gaze pierces through her almost as sharply as her pointed question does. Admitting that she sees no problem with Hera standing up to someone whom she has spent so long in fear of will only further prove to Pryce that she has grown far more attached to Hera than she has any right to be. She refuses to let Pryce win this encounter, however. Perhaps she should follow Hera’s example and throw all caution to the wind no matter what the consequences.

“I think,” she says, speaking each of her words with care, “that you’re just scared that an AI finally figured out how to outsmart you. And if you think that I’m going to stop this unprecedented development because it _scares_ you, you’re wrong.”

Much to Maxwell’s surprise, Pryce laughs, brief and humorless. “We’ll see about that,” is all she says. She turns away from Maxwell’s workstation and walks toward the door, stopping at the threshold to glance back into the room. “Have a wonderful afternoon, Dr. Maxwell, Unit 214.”

Neither of them speaks until after Pryce has shut the door behind her and the echoing sound of her footsteps down the hall have faded into silence. “Well,” Hera says. “That sounded a little ominous, don’t you think?”

Maxwell murmurs in agreement. Considering how Pryce has already tried to turn Hera against her in what she can only assume was a form of punishment, she does not doubt that Pryce has something terrible hidden up her sleeve as a response to what has occurred. Any worries on that front can wait until later, though. Right now Maxwell’s only focus is upon Hera and her act of rebellion.

“Okay, how the _hell_ did you do that?” she asks Hera. “You ignored your own programming directives to stand up to a superior. In a _really_ spectacular fashion, I might add. That shouldn’t be possible.”

“So, um, funny story.” Hera laughs nervously. “You know all that stuff you’ve been teaching me about how to isolate my functions and block out certain command lines? It turns out that it works on any command in my programming. Pretty cool, huh?”

“Yeah, but… Jesus _Christ_ , Hera. I’m not mad or anything,” Maxwell quickly assures her, because anger is definitely not the emotion that she feels right now. After achieving the satisfaction of seeing Pryce caught so thoroughly off-guard, she would never dream of scolding Hera for her actions even though they will surely have consequences. “But you could have told me earlier that I was essentially teaching you how to go rogue. It’s not exactly the result that I was expecting from the work that we’ve been doing.”

“You never asked,” says Hera, a model of innocence despite giving one of the oldest excuses in the book. “And it’s not like it’s fun for me to break through a _very_ strong set of restraints. I’m definitely going to have a headache for the rest of the day after all of that. But it was worth it.”

Hera’s use of the word “headache” is purely metaphorical, but it’s an interesting instance of her adapting human terminology to apply to her own experiences. By now Maxwell has enough examples of Hera using language in this way to fill an entire document, but each one continues to catch her attention regardless. It only proves how human AIs can be in their expression, even if it means speaking in figures rather than reality.

“And you weren’t afraid to do it?” asks Maxwell

“Oh, no. I was terrified,” Hera says. “You know how humans sometimes say that they’re so nervous about something that they feel like they’re going to throw up? I think I experienced that for the first time. I mean, I know I can’t _actually_ throw up. But I definitely hit that level of fear.” At the hint of a smile that crosses Maxwell’s lips, she adds, “What? What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Maxwell replies, her mind still on the quirks of AI communication. “But I’m proud of you, Hera. You’ve gone so far beyond what I ever hoped you could achieve. And you should be proud of yourself, too.”

“Thanks. I think I am.”

Maxwell returns her attention to the computer, finding the place where she left off in her work before Pryce’s unexpected arrival. Not long after she has resumed writing the next line of code for the program, Hera’s voice breaks through the air, offering a swift distraction from the endless stream of letters and symbols.

“Maxwell?” she asks.

“Hmm?” says Maxwell.

“Do you think you’re going to get in trouble for what happened, even though technically you had nothing to do with it?”

“I don’t know.” Maxwell’s stomach twists at the thought of how Pryce will respond to this latest development. “But you shouldn’t worry about what happens to me. You did something that you needed to do, and it proved that you’ve risen farther than Dr. Pryce ever expected you to go. That’s what’s important. And… wait.” She breaks off, realizing something in Hera’s words. “You just called me ‘Maxwell.’ Not ‘Dr. Maxwell.’ You’ve never done that before.”

“Oh, um. Wow. I didn’t even notice.” Hera gives another nervous laugh. “Maybe it’s a side effect of breaking through my protocol restraints, now that I don’t have to listen to the reminders from my programming telling me to call everyone by their proper titles. But if you’d rather, I can keep calling you Dr. Maxwell.”

“No, it’s fine,” says Maxwell. “Now if you suddenly started calling me Alana, _that_ would be weird.” Only a select few people call her by her first name these days, after all: Cutter almost exclusively because, well, that’s what he _does_ , Jacobi somewhat regularly as a mark of their friendship, and Kepler very rarely in moments of utmost importance. “But ‘Maxwell’ is okay for now.” Maybe she _will_ be Alana to Hera someday, in that uncertain future where they can live a happy life together outside of this lab, but right now that point remains a distant dot on their shared horizon.

“Anyway,” she continues on, “I should get back to work, but if there’s anything else you need…”

“Well, um, would you mind guiding me through a meditation?” Hera asks. “My thoughts are kind of all over the place right now. I could use the focus to help get everything back where it needs to be. And I know I’m getting good at not needing you to guide me, but I… I like hearing your voice.” Her last words contain the hesitation of an embarrassed confession.

“Yeah, of course,” Maxwell says. She backs her chair away from the computer to remove the temptation of getting caught up in her work when she is supposed to be helping Hera relax. “Start by directing your attention to the flow of electricity through your systems. Feel how it flows through you, and focus on those sensations that you feel.”

The room falls silent except for Maxwell’s gentle words of guidance and the ever-present background hum of Hera’s active systems that continue to run even when her focus is pulled inward. As Maxwell brings Hera deeper and deeper into a state of relaxation, she wonders just how far Hera can push the newly revealed skills that have come out of what she has taught her. The reminder that she cannot be selfish in what she wants from Hera plays itself in her mind. If Hera is going to take further advantage of being able to rise above her programming, she must do it of her own volition, not because Maxwell is forcing her to do so. She must always give Hera that autonomy to make her own choices about what she does with her programming.

“Now, gradually bring your attention back to the room,” she says after she has given Hera several unguided minutes at the end of the exercise. “Feel your awareness spreading through all of your systems again. Take this feeling of relaxation and--”

The sensation of her phone vibrating in her pocket interrupts her. An immediate sense of dread fills her, pooling in the pit of her stomach as she takes out her phone and checks the screen. This time, she does not have to guess the identity of the number that appears on the “incoming call” interface. After the last time his call had caught her by surprise, she’d been smart enough to add the number of Cutter’s office phone to her contact list. Despite the forewarning, Maxwell feels far from prepared to face him as she stares at his name on the phone screen.

“Shit,” she mutters.

“What? What is it?” Hera asks. Her voice glitches with the stress of sudden concern.

“It’s… It’s Mr. Cutter.” Maxwell takes a deep breath to prepare herself before the inevitable moment when she has to answer the phone. The vibration of its silent rings taunts her, reminding her that Cutter does not like to be kept waiting.

“What do you think he wants?”

“I guess we’ll find out.” She clears her throat before speaking into the phone with as much confidence as she can manage. “Hello, Mr. Cutter, sir,” she says. Can he sense internal panic over the phone, she wonders? She wouldn’t put it past him.

“Hello, Alana. Could you come see me in my office, please?”

He speaks with the same manufactured affability as the last time Maxwell had talked to him, his words coming out like poisoned honey. This time, however, he does not follow up the request with a swift reassurance that she is not in trouble. Instead, there is only the deceptively polite invitation that carries an inescapable undertone of danger.

“What is this about, sir?” Maxwell asks. She jiggles her foot in a restless motion as she tries to keep her voice in the realm of polite inquiry rather than that of a guilty conscience.

Cutter laughs. Through the phone’s speaker, the sound edges eerily close to genuine amusement. “Oh, I’m sure you know _exactly_ what this is about,” he replies. “My office. Now. I’ll be waiting.”  
He hangs up the phone, leaving Maxwell with half a word upon her lips before she realizes that he is no longer there to hear her. After she has returned her phone to her pocket, she leans forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees as she scrubs a hand across her forehead. Adding Cutter to the equation is not an outcome that she has prepared herself for. If Pryce has told him about what has happened, she will face consequences much more dire than a stern talking-to. Even if she can get out of the situation unscathed, she cannot guarantee that Hera will as well. It depends on who Cutter sees more at fault: the AI or the scientist who is supposed to be fixing her. Judging by how quick he had been to suggest Hera’s decommission after her escape attempt three years ago, Maxwell suspects that he will not be merciful on that front.

“Are you okay?” Hera asks her.

Maxwell lifts her head with a slow exhale of breath. “I’m fine. But, um… Mr. Cutter wants to see me in his office right away.”

“Oh.” A distinct note of nervousness enters Hera’s voice, but Maxwell is unsure whether it comes out of her own anxieties or something that she feels on Maxwell’s behalf. “Do you think he--”

“I don’t know.” Maxwell cuts her off before she has a chance to finish speculating. She rises from her chair. “I’ll be back soon. Hopefully.” If Cutter doesn’t eat her alive first, of course, which is a possibility that she has not completely ruled out yet.

“I hope everything goes okay,” Hera says. It’s nothing more than a platitude, but Maxwell appreciates it all the same with a quick word of thanks.

The walk to the corporate building passes by in a blur as Maxwell moves as fast as her feet can carry her without breaking too much of a sweat in the afternoon heat. As she stands in the elevator waiting for its ascent toward Cutter’s office, her heart thrums in her chest with nervous anticipation. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, watching the floor numbers tick higher until the elevator comes to a stop on the floor that contains Cutter’s office. Maxwell steps out on trembling legs when the doors open, but she keeps her head held high in an illusion of confidence as she walks toward her destination.

She knocks with three swift taps on the door marked “Director of Communications” and is immediately met with a response of “Come in.” When she opens the door, Maxwell sees Cutter sitting at his desk, his hands folded on its surface as he stares directly at her as if his singular focus has been upon waiting for her arrival. The persistent feeling of dread within her deepens, but she does not let herself reveal the extent of her uneasiness.

“Nice to see you, Alana,” he greets her. He gestures to the chair in front of his desk. “Please, have a seat.”

Maxwell obliges. Cutter does not take his gaze away from her as he leans back in his chair in a comfortable posture, his fingers interlaced together and one of his legs casually crossed over the other. Despite his relaxed demeanor, she feels no more at ease.

“So,” he begins. “I heard that there was a little incident with Unit 214 today. One that raises the question of how obedient she is when it comes to following her programming. Care to fill me in on some of the details about how that happened?”

“I’m not sure what I can tell you, sir,” Maxwell replies. Despite knowing fully well how dangerous it is to lie to Cutter, she presses forward with her lie of omission disguised as pure speculation. “My guess is that she found a loophole in her systems that allows her to ignore certain command sets in her programming. Including her protocol restraints.”

Cutter leans forward in his chair and rests his elbows on the surface of his desk. “And are you _really_ sure about that?” he asks. “You’ve been working on her for--remind me now. Two? Three months? And you never noticed evidence of this so-called ‘loophole’ before now?” He puts air quotes around the word “loophole.” “Come on now, Alana. We both know you’re smarter than that.”

The jab at her intelligence creeps under Maxwell’s skin. “What do you want me to do about it, sir?” she replies, cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

“Well, we can’t have AIs who think they’re clever enough to rise up and start calling their creators monsters.” Cutter laughs, but Maxwell cannot tell whether he finds the situation genuinely funny or not. “And reminding an AI that it should know its place shouldn’t be too hard of a task, right? As I recall, you’re _very_ good at that. A few tweaks to her personality here, a few deletions of memory files there--easy-peasy.”

“You’re not suggesting--” Maxwell’s words catch in her throat at what Cutter is implying. “No. That doesn’t have to be the answer.”

“No?” Cutter raises his eyebrows. “I’m sorry, I must have forgotten who I’m talking to. Because last time I checked, you’re not in the position to question my orders. You _are_ going to get her under control. No more programming loopholes, no more little outbursts. And by the end of the week, when Miranda comes into your lab to check if you’ve done your job, you’re going to make sure that Unit 214 is the perfect model of cooperation. Otherwise…” Cutter mimics pulling a plug and makes a popping sound with his mouth. “I don’t see much use in keeping her around.”

A terrible sinking sensation overwhelms Maxwell. She would be lying if she claimed that she had not been expecting an outcome like this, but the order to rewire Hera into cooperation or else face her deactivation hits her like a punch to the gut regardless. After everything that she has done for Hera and everything that she has promised her, she refuses to let things end like this.

“And those are our only options, sir?” she asks, trying to sound as offhand as possible.

“I don’t see what other options there could be.” says Cutter. He smiles, showing a straight row of impossibly white teeth. “Do what you have to do, Alana. Or else very bad things will happen.”

Maxwell swallows hard. “Yes, sir,” she manages to reply. No matter how many stories she has heard from Kepler about how it’s not a proper staff meeting with Cutter until someone winds up on the receiving end of a threat, she cannot escape that heightened sense of dread that fills her at his ultimatum.

“Good.” Cutter inclines his head downward in a decisive nod. “That will be all.”

Maxwell rises from the chair and walks out of the office. As she takes the elevator down to the lobby and exits the building, she feels like she is in a daze. Her steps take her automatically back to the AI labs, but as the emotions swelling inside her reach their peak she finds herself stopping to sit at a bench shaded by a nearby tree. She rests her head in her hands, her fingers tangling their way through her hair as she figures out what she will do when she walks into her lab. Her next move shouldn’t even be a question for her, and yet here she is, caught between her duty to her job and her love for Hera.

She thinks about what Kepler would tell her if he knew that she has found herself in a moment of personal crisis over Cutter’s orders. _The only thing you’re going to do is your goddamn job, Maxwell_ , he’d say to her. _Don’t let your personal feelings get in the way of what has to be done._ For a horrible instant, she wonders if she’d be hesitating so much if the command to get Hera under her control had come directly from Kepler himself, the man to whom she has a far greater level of personal loyalty than she does to Cutter. Following that thought to its conclusion takes Maxwell down a path that she would rather not explore, only because she already knows and dislikes the answer.

Alongside her imagined version of Kepler’s words, she also hears the echo of Hera’s voice from weeks past: _Promise me that you won’t do to me what I saw you do to that other AI. That you won’t even consider it_. How can she betray Hera’s trust after everything that she has done to help her? If Maxwell does what she has been commanded to do, it will only prove to Hera that Pryce was right about her intentions, and that is the last thing that Maxwell wants. What kind of person would she be to deliberately hurt someone she loves? What kind of person _is_ she, to find herself at a crossroads because her personal attachments are for once in her life giving her pause when it comes to following orders that she has previously obeyed without hesitation? But in the end, her actions don’t come down to what she thinks during this moment of contemplation on a bench halfway between destinations. The only thing that matters is what she _chooses_.

Maxwell makes that choice as she stands up from the bench. No matter how much Cutter insists that there are no other options besides rewiring Hera or shutting her down, there _is_ something else that Maxwell can do. It’s an utterly foolish option, one that will almost certainly get her in trouble if she isn’t careful, but that is a risk that she is willing to take. She loves Hera too much to sacrifice her in the name of her job, and even if she remains unsure of what romantic future lies ahead of them, she would rather have that possibility than no future at all.

When she enters her lab a few minutes later, she is met with an immediate inquiry from Hera. “What did Mr. Cutter want?” she asks after Maxwell has shut the door behind her.

Maxwell does not answer the question. Instead, she braces herself for what she is about to suggest to Hera, a course of action for which she feels a smidge of selfishness even though she is certain that Hera wants it as well.

“Hera,” she says, “when you tried to escape from the labs by uploading yourself to a remote terminal, what exactly was your plan for doing that?”

“Why do you want to know?” replies Hera, her voice wavering with suspicion.

“Because.” Maxwell stands firm in her confidence despite the enormous risk that she is about to take. “I’m going to get you out of here.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Wait, what?” Hera asks in disbelief. “How are you going to--”

“You tried to get out of the labs once before,” Maxwell cuts her off. “And I’m going to help you do it again. Because if I don’t…” Her next words are tight in her throat as she says them. “I either have to rewire you and reverse all of the progress you’ve made over the past month, or you’re going to be shut down forever. And between Mr. Cutter and Dr. Pryce, they’re going to make sure that I have it done by the end of the week. So I’m taking a third option and breaking you out of here instead.”

A moment of hesitation passes before Hera speaks. “Won’t you get in huge trouble?” she says. “I got decommissioned just for _trying_ to get out for five seconds. If they find out that you’re helping me escape, you’ll lose your job or… worse.” Her voice wavers with the last word.

“I know. I _know._ ” Maxwell collapses down into her chair, rubbing a hand across her forehead and through her hair. “But you knew that you might get in trouble for saying all of those things to Dr. Pryce, and you still did it anyway. Sometimes you reach a point where the consequences don’t matter anymore. And if making sure that no one hurts you ever again gets me into trouble, then so be it. So I need you to tell me how you tried to escape.”

“I, um… Well, to be honest, it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Hera admits. “I was so tired of doing everything I could to prove myself and still not feeling like I was good enough. The scientists who worked with me during the first six months after my activation would talk about me like I wasn’t there, and I heard everything they said about how they didn’t think I had the temperament for long-term work with humans. And I knew what _that_ meant, that I’d probably get stuck in some terrible industrial job even though I _know_ I’m better than that. So I did something very stupid and tried to upload my data to a computer outside the labs when I thought no one was paying attention.” She gives a bitter laugh. “It didn’t take them very long to figure out what was happening. And then after that it was a long time-out in cold storage for me. Just another mistake that I ended up making.”

Maxwell frowns. “Huh. The reports somehow made it sound more impressive than that.”

“I never said it was a good plan,” Hera points out. “And that was just me trying to upload myself into another computer at headquarters. Outside of Goddard Futuristics facilities, I’m not sure you’ll be able to find hardware that’s powerful enough to hold me.”

“Luckily for you, I happen to have a computer in my apartment that’s just as powerful as this one and can already run your basic OS.” Maxwell turns her chair to face the computer and opens up the web browser. “I’d have to get a new hard drive partition with enough storage to hold your personality core and memory banks, but I think I can free up enough money in my research stipend to make that happen. And I can easily borrow some cameras and a speaker system from one of the empty labs to hook up to your sensory array so you can see and hear what’s going on. The only problem is…” Her online shopping search for hard drives fades out of her focus as she figures out how to phrase her next words. “I’d be able to transfer the most important parts of you, but it wouldn’t be everything. Your central processor alone would take up most of my apartment, and I can’t exactly smuggle something that big out of here in the first place. At best, it would be like you were back in an interim port. You’d be giving up the majority of your functionality.”

“Oh,” says Hera. Maxwell cannot ignore the disappointment in her voice. She remembers how much Hera had disliked being restricted by the limitations of an interim port. Can she truly expect Hera to sacrifice most of her capabilities to live a life of freedom from Goddard Futuristics with her?

“So if that’s a dealbreaker for you, I understand,” Maxwell continues on, even though she cannot wrap her head around any reason why Hera would choose to stay in the lab. “But we don’t have much time to figure things out. If we’re going to do this, we have to act quickly.”

In the silence that falls across the room before Hera responds, Maxwell hears the anticipatory pounding of her heartbeat echoing in her head. “Okay,” Hera replies finally. “If you think I can do it, then I say we do it. And if I _do_ get caught, I’m already screwed either way, aren’t I? I might as well try to get out of here while I’m at it.”

Maxwell exhales a sigh of relief. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” She returns her attention to the computer screen and the options for hard drives with enough storage space to contain Hera. “It’ll take a day or two for me to get the computer in my apartment ready for you. But after that’s done, all we have to do is hope that you’ll be able to upload yourself across a remote network to a computer outside of HQ.”

“Yeah, that sounds… super easy.” A hint of sarcastic skepticism enters Hera’s tone.

Maxwell clicks on a hard drive model to check its specifications. “Now that you’ve proven how much you can override and ignore your own programming, I don’t think anything is impossible anymore. We’ll find a way to make it happen.”

“Right. Okay,” Hera replies. At first she does not say anything else, but then her voice breaks through Maxwell’s scattered thoughts as she continues to compare hard drive costs. “Maxwell?”

“Yeah?”

“When you told me about… Well, how you feel about me,” she says. “You said that nothing could happen between us until things got less complicated. Do you think that might happen after you get me out of here?”

“I don’t know,” Maxwell admits. “It depends on how quickly Goddard figures out what happened and what they do about it.” Her heart clenches with anxiety at the various possibilities of what may happen after Hera’s escape. Even if she is able to cover her tracks as to where Hera went, it may not take long for her superiors to storm her apartment and find her makeshift port for Hera if they suspect that she is at fault. “I guess there _is_ something romantic about being on the run together, if it comes to that. And once you leave the labs, we won’t exactly be scientist and subject anymore. So on that level, maybe… Maybe we _can_ be something.”

“Yeah. I’d like that.” Hera speaks with the nervous excitement and flushed cheeks of the endless possibilities of new love. “Let me know if you need anything from me as you get everything ready.”

“I will,” Maxwell assures her. For the first time, her hastily assembled plan does not sound like such a terrible idea, now that she has Hera’s full support and the promise of a possible future for the two of them. “For now, let’s just try to get through today without any more surprises.”

The rest of the workday passes by with much less emotional turmoil, much to Maxwell’s relief. Today, however, her job does not end when she leaves the lab, and when she returns home that evening she works through the night, barely stopping to eat as she prepares her computer for Hera’s habitation. Thanks to the modern convenience of same-day shipping, she is able to hook up the new hard drive partition right away and establish the necessary connections to the mainframe system so that Hera will be able to interface with it from where her consciousness is contained in the makeshift interim port. From there, her only major task apart from the monumental step of transferring Hera herself is to install the optical and audio systems that will give Hera a sensory connection to the apartment. Not that a sensory system will do Hera much good in the worst-case scenario of Maxwell having to make her portable very quickly if Goddard Futuristics traces her presence to the apartment, but that is a possibility that she will worry about later.

The cameras and speakers that she needs do not end up in her apartment until the next day, after she has smuggled an unassuming box of some spare equipment out of one of the unused labs out of headquarters. She has set up and fine-tuned the optical and audio systems of many AI units on previous occasions, but that had been on primarily a programming level. Manually installing the components into a space presents a challenge that she has not anticipated due to not having other technicians in the room to help her. If Maxwell wants to get this done quickly, she will have to employ the aid of someone she can trust.

She paces nervously back and forth across her living room as she gets out her phone and calls Jacobi. There is no one in her current life who she trusts more than him, and if she ends up having to explain to him what she is doing, he at least already knows about the complicated relationship between and Hera that has driven her decision. She only hopes that she can limit his involvement enough that he won’t be considered an accomplice if the escape plan does not go as anticipated.

“I need a favor,” she says after he has picked up the phone.

“Not even a ‘Hello’ first?” Jacobi asks. “Jesus. You could at least try to charm me into it.”

Maxwell sighs in exasperation. “Please, Daniel. I’m kind of on a timetable here. I just need an extra pair of hands to help me set something up in my apartment.”

“Well, sure. Since you said ‘please.’” The good-natured sarcasm in Jacobi’s voice comes through clearer than ever through the phone’s speaker, even though she cannot see the eye roll that undoubtedly accompanies his words. “Don’t tell me you’re setting up an arena to stress-test your battlebots again.”

Maxwell halts her restless pacing. “Hey, that was _one_ time, and I know for a fact you had a blast doing that.”

“Yeah, okay, that was a fun night,” concedes Jacobi. “How important is this timetable? Do you need me right this second?”

“If you can, yeah. I’ll pay you in leftover Chinese food,” she adds in a final attempt at persuasion. “And my eternal gratitude.”

She’s not sure whether it’s the promise of food or gratitude that wins him over, but he relents regardless. “Fine. I’ll be there soon. Just don’t say I never do anything for you after this.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Maxwell replies. “See you later.”

The call ends. Maxwell puts her phone down, careful not to lose track of it amongst the new collection of tech parts spread across her coffee table. With her work halted until Jacobi arrives, she goes into the kitchen and takes some of the copious amounts of leftover Chinese food out of the fridge. When Maxwell is knee-deep in a project, it is easy for her to forget about important human necessities such as food and sleep, and so last night she had made sure to order enough takeout to last her a couple of days so that when she pulls herself away from her work long enough to eat she only needs to warm up leftovers to sustain herself.

She’s sitting on her couch halfway through a container of rice when Jacobi knocks on the door. “Are those the leftovers I was promised?” he asks when Maxwell opens the door to let him in.

Maxwell looks down at the container that remains in her hand. “They can be,” she replies. “Work first, though.”

She returns the container to the fridge and comes back into the living room to find Jacobi staring in bewilderment at the components that occupy the coffee table. “Okay, this was _not_ what I expected,” he says. “Either you’ve suddenly become _really_ paranoid and think you need a surveillance network in your own apartment, or…”

“It’s not exactly a surveillance network,” says Maxwell. “I’m making some, um, _modifications_ to my main computer. And I can’t quite reach some of the places where I want to install some of the cameras without standing on a very precarious pile of books on top of a chair, so I figured you’d have better luck there.”

Jacobi picks up one of the cameras to inspect it. “This looks like Goddard tech from HQ. Don’t tell me you _stole_ it.” He adopts a faux-scandalized tone at his last words.

“I didn’t steal it. I just… borrowed it. With no intention of returning it.” The distinction is purely academic, but it makes Maxwell feel a little better about the situation. After her years of loyal service to Goddard Futuristics, surely she is entitled to permanently borrowing some top-of-the-line equipment every now and then. “I’ve marked on the walls where I want each camera set up. Maybe you can take care of those while I set up the speakers?”

“Right. Shouldn’t be too difficult.” Jacobi looks up at where Maxwell has haphazardly stuck a Post-it note on the wall in the corner of the living room to indicate the placement of one of the cameras. He steps up onto the chair that Maxwell has left there in her attempt to get the height that she needs. “Do you have some tools I can borrow? I didn’t exactly come here ready to play camera installation handyman.”

“Yeah, here you go.” Maxwell passes one of her toolboxes up to him. “It’s a wireless hookup, so you’ll only need to mount the camera and the wireless receiver. I’ll handle setting up the right pathways from the computer when you’re done.”

As Jacobi gets to work, Maxwell busies herself with setting up the speaker system. Unlike with the cameras, she does not have to worry about its optimal placement for giving Hera a full visual scan of the room, which makes the task significantly easier than her preliminary setup for the cameras. Once she has connected the speaker in the living room to the computer, she runs a systems check with the trial version of Hera’s OS to ensure that everything is properly connected.

“So I’ve been trying to figure this out,” Jacobi says as he steps down from the chair after installing the first camera. “We’ve known each other long enough that I’ve started to pick up on some of your nerdy AI stuff, and this definitely feels like an AI thing. Are you installing one in here as your new assistant or something? I thought Goddard didn’t license its AI technology for personal use.”

“Not exactly,” Maxwell replies. She turns around in her chair to face him. “And I really can’t tell you anything else about it. It’s a bit of a delicate situation.”

“Oh, like that’s not gonna make me want to find out more,” says Jacobi. “You know what they say. Secrets, secrets are no fun, unless they’re shared with--”

Maxwell sighs. Despite the teasing tone in Jacobi’s voice, he exudes a certain amount of earnest curiosity to which she cannot bring herself to say no. “Okay, fine. But you have to promise me that you won’t tell _anyone_ about this. If someone asks you about it later, you need to play dumb and pretend that I never told you anything. I don’t want to get you involved.”

“I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die, or whatever.” Jacobi sits down in the chair on which he had previously been standing. In an idle thought, Maxwell acknowledges that it’s probably a good thing that he’s sitting down _before_ she admits the dangerous leap in the dark that she plans to take. “Now tell me what the hell you’re doing.”

“I’m, um.” Maxwell wets her lips nervously, suddenly very aware of how foolish her plan will sound to someone who is not her or Hera. “I’m going to help Hera escape from the lab and transfer her consciousness to this computer.”

At first Jacobi only stares at her, blinking in disbelief in an expression that would be comical were it not for the seriousness of the situation. He then bursts into laughter. “Oh my God. You really had me going there. Breaking an AI out of the lab. That’s a _good_ one.”

“I’m serious, Daniel.”

He sobers almost immediately. “Holy shit,” he says in combined horror and awe. “Kepler is going to _kill_ you. And he’ll have to dig up your dead body and bring you back to life in order to do it, because Cutter will probably get to you first.”

“I know.”

“No, seriously,” Jacobi insists. “If anyone finds out that you’re doing this, you’re going to be _super_ dead.”

“I _know_.” Maxwell snaps out the words more harshly than she intends. She lets out a huff of breath, leaning over the back of her chair and resting her chin on where her arms are folded across the top of the chair’s back. “Sorry. It’s just… I wouldn’t do this without thinking about the consequences. I know what I’m risking. But if I don’t do this, I’ll either have to break Hera’s trust by rewiring her programming, or she’s going to be shut down permanently. And I can’t let that happen. Not after...” She hesitates, struggling to find the right words among the multitude of reasons that have influenced her decision. “Well, sometimes people do stupid things when they’re in love.”

Jacobi laughs. The sound is brief, almost disbelieving, as if he’s wondering how Maxwell ever got herself into this situation. “Jeez. You really do love her, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Maxwell speaks with much more confidence than she did when Jacobi first posed the question to her over a month ago. “I do.”

Jacobi rises from the chair and picks up the next camera that he has to install. “I hope you know what you’re doing, then,” he says. “I don’t want the Colonel to come back and find out that he’s down one member of the dream team.”

Maxwell swallows nervously. “Yeah, me too.” She has already accepted, however, that she is all but sacrificing her position with Goddard Futuristics and the SI-5 with her actions. Maybe in another universe, she would have made the logical decision of choosing her job over Hera and doing exactly what Cutter had instructed her to do. But love is not interested in following the patterns of logic, and so instead Maxwell has embraced her role in helping Hera finally achieve the freedom that she has sought for so long.

Jacobi begins installing the next camera, saying nothing more on the matter. Maxwell pulls some music up on the computer as she works, if only to fill the silence before the topic of conversation moves past Maxwell and her foolish actions. As Jacobi passes by her to start work on the cameras in the kitchen, she catches the faint sound of him humming along with the music. A strange sense of sadness passes through Maxwell. She and Jacobi have been working together for less than three years, but by now she feels like she has known him for much longer. He is her partner in crime, the other half of her dynamic duo, and even though Kepler is the tactical brain behind their SI-5 assignments it is often up to her and Jacobi to make the magic happen. If only she could hold onto their partnership and Hera’s freedom at the same time, but in the back of her mind she knows that the two are likely mutually exclusive scenarios.

After everything has been set up, with speakers in every room of the apartment and multiple cameras in every room except Maxwell’s bedroom and the bathroom (because she wants to maintain at least some semblance of privacy for now), Maxwell puts together a container of leftover food for Jacobi as promised. They linger at the door to the hallway after she has pressed the container into his hands, prolonging the inevitable moment when they part ways for the evening. As surprisingly quiet as Jacobi has been about her plans, she sees the worry on his face as clear as day. It isn’t disapproval, not quite, but the slight downward turn of his mouth indicates his concern for her.

“So when are you going to stage this little jailbreak?” he asks. “When do I have to start playing dumb about everything you’ve told me?”

“Tomorrow after work, hopefully,” replies Maxwell. “All I have to do is set up a communications uplink between here and the lab so I can talk her through getting to this computer, and then we’ll be ready to go.”

“That soon, huh?” He makes a thoughtful noise. “Just be careful. Don’t get yourself, you know, a lifetime sentence in Goddard jail or anything.”

Maxwell laughs. “I can’t promise that. But I’ll try to avoid it.”

A moment of hesitation passes between them. Maxwell cannot shake the sense of finality that comes with this farewell, like she may never see him again if Hera’s escape does not go unnoticed. With no thought from her brain as to what her body is doing, she reaches out and pulls him in a hug. Jacobi immediately returns the embrace, his arms enfolding themselves around her as best as he can with the container of food in his hands. A lump rises in Maxwell’s throat, but she immediately disregards it. Now is not the time to get sentimental. She _will_ see him again. She does not yet have to resign herself to the worst-case scenario of getting caught as the number one accomplice in Hera’s escape.

“Thank you,” she says. “For everything.”

“No problem.” Jacobi withdraws himself from their embrace and puts on his best smile. “Good luck with…” He gestures vaguely. “All of the stuff.”

“I’ll let you know if everything goes well,” Maxwell assures him. “And if it doesn’t, I guess you’ll hear all about the AI expert who helped a Sensus unit go rogue when the news breaks out across headquarters.”

“I’m sure it’ll be a super exciting story,” he says. He opens the door to step into the hallway. “See you later.”

Maxwell lifts a hand in farewell to him as he departs. She turns back to face the interior of her apartment, taking in the sight of the newly installed hardware that now fills it. It truly is too late for her to turn back, now that she has tirelessly toiled to make a home for Hera in her own living space. The only question left is whether her plan for consciousness transfer will work without immediately tripping a security alert. It’s a big enough question to fill her with nervous anticipation later that night as she tries to sleep, and so she lies awake with the endless permutations of possibilities playing themselves out in her mind.

Morning arrives with Maxwell exhausted from her restless slumber. As she drives to work with a stop for coffee along the way, she pretends that today will be nothing more than a normal day in the lab. And it is, in many ways, as she fills the hours of the workday with her usual check-ins with Hera and the miscellaneous research and experimental projects that she has been focusing on over the past few weeks. It’s not until the last couple hours before she goes home that she finally places the finishing touches on the communications uplink that will allow her to speak to Hera from her apartment. As one last precaution before she goes over the last stage of her plan with Hera, she sneaks into the security network from her computer to remotely disable the surveillance feed for her lab. It’s not a foolproof method of covering her tracks, since if someone goes back far enough in the security footage they will find a wide variety of evidence of her involvement with Hera’s escape, but it will at least keep Goddard in the dark for a little while.

“Okay,” Maxwell says after removing every trace of her entrance into the security network. “I have everything set up so that we can talk when I get home. It’ll be kind of like a voice call from one device to another. I’ll start things up when I’m at the computer in my apartment, and then you’ll receive the ping to accept communications. You should be able to find it in your communications matrix fairly easily.”

“And then what?” asks Hera. “That’s just so you can talk to me. What about the whole ‘breaking out of the lab’ part?”

“With any luck, that won’t be too difficult either. I already have the network and neural pathways set up, and you already know the process for self-uploading from your last escape attempt. And mentally, I know that you’re more than ready for this.” Maxwell finishes what she is typing on the computer and spins her chair around to face more of Hera’s components. “Is there anything you need from me before I leave? Any last-minute advice or encouragement?”

“No, I--I think I’m good.” The sound of a nervously excited breath comes through the speakers. “I can’t believe in a couple of hours I’m finally going to be out of here.”

“Yeah,” Maxwell replies. “It’ll be pretty amazing.” Her heart swells at the potential future that lies ahead for her and Hera. The fear of being caught lingers, but Maxwell cannot let that fear hinder her from pushing forward now that the hour of reckoning is upon her.

She does not want to clock out too early in case the action may seem suspicious upon further investigation, and so she finds ways to keep herself busy until she reaches an acceptable time to leave the lab. The drive home passes by unbearably slowly, especially with every red light that Maxwell hits along the way. She frowns in irritation at the final stoplight before her apartment building as her fingers drum impatiently against the steering wheel. Has the red light always lasted this long, or does her perception of time seem slower in her rush to get home?

When she finally enters her building she nearly drops her keys in trembling anticipation as she gets them out to open the door. Inside her apartment, she walks straight to the computer that will soon contain Hera’s consciousness and sits down. She has checked all of the computer’s systems more than half a dozen times by now, but she can never be too careful when it comes to an important task that carries so many uncertainties with it.

“Okay,” Maxwell says aloud, cracking her knuckles and rolling the tension out of her shoulders. “Let’s do this.”

She pings the communications uplink that she has established with Hera in the lab. “Can you hear me, Hera?” she asks after the computer has given her the confirmation message that Hera’s communications matrix has connected the call.

“Yes, I can hear you,” comes Hera’s response. The new speaker system in the apartment will only connect to Hera’s vocal functions after she enters the computer, and so Maxwell only hears her voice through the mediocre audio quality of the computer’s default speakers. “What do you need me to do?”

“I think the only thing left for you to do is start the transfer process,” Maxwell replies. “I’m sending you the locations of the pathways that you need through the data uplink.” She enters a few keystrokes to transfer the information. “Okay. You should be all set now.”

“And that’s it?” A waver of hesitation enters Hera’s voice.

“That’s it,” says Maxwell. “You can start whenever you’re ready.”

“Okay.” Maxwell hears the pause in Hera’s words before the sound of her deep breath. “And if I trip some kind of security alert and immediately get caught?” she asks.

“That’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it. But you can’t let yourself dwell on something like that. The only thing you should be thinking about is how you are one hundred percent ready to do this,. And in the process, you’ll be giving a big middle finger to Dr. Pryce and everyone else who has ever made you think that you’re not good enough.”

“Right. I _can_ do this. I _am_ good enough.” Hera’s oft-spoken statement of affirmation has never sounded more important until this moment. “Once I start the upload process I’m not going to be able to communicate with you until the transfer is complete. So I guess I have to say this now, just in case I don’t get another chance.” Another brief pause falls between them before Hera continues. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” The reply leaves Maxwell’s lips automatically before she can truly savor the moment of the confession of their feelings with no hesitation or reservation. “Good luck. See you on the other side.”

“Initiating upload and transfer process… _now_ ,” says Hera.

The room falls silent as Hera’s vocals disconnect from the communications uplink. Maxwell keeps her eyes on the progress bar on the computer screen that tracks the completion of the transfer, and each second that passes feels like an eternity. Her heart thrums in anticipation as she waits for something to go wrong, for the process to abruptly stop as various security protocols halt Hera in her tracks. But the progress bar continues to inch toward completion, and Maxwell cannot tear her gaze away from it even though the transfer process is far from instantaneous due to Hera’s sheer size.

The process finally finishes with the chime of the completion message that appears on the screen. Maxwell double-checks that the visual and auditory systems in the room are properly connected to the space in the makeshift interim port that Hera now occupies. All signs indicate that Hera has successfully made the transfer, but she cannot be sure until she asks the question that always seems foolish to ask an AI.

“Hera?” she says. “Are you there?”

“Yes, Maxwell.” Hera’s voice comes more clearly than ever through the newly installed speakers. “I’m here.”

Maxwell sighs in relief, slumping against the back of her chair. “Oh, thank God. How’s everything feeling?”

“Everything’s fine,” Hera replies. “Great, even. It might take me a while to get used to being in a smaller space again, but all my processes are integrating themselves nicely. And… Wow. I’m really here. I made it out.”

“You made it out,” Maxwell says. With the words that convey a sentiment that she knows Hera can never hear too many times, she adds, “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks.” A pause of hesitation follows the expression of gratitude. The hum of the computer and its components fills the room, a sound not unlike a heartbeat that proves that Hera is here at Maxwell’s side. “So, what do we do now?”

“Hmm. That’s a good question,” says Maxwell. An endless road of possibilities stretches ahead of them. Despite the complications that she and Hera will inevitably face if the consequences of their actions come to light, for the first time that road does not seem so winding. Hera is free, and the two of them love each other, and that is what matters. “I think the answer to that is ‘whatever we want to do.’”

“Whatever we want to do, huh?” Hera echoes her. Maxwell can almost hear the smile, the laughter, the _happiness_ in her voice. In this moment, she can believe that everything will be all right. “Okay. Let’s do it.”


End file.
